


the heart is just a bloody motor (never meant to drive)

by GollumPanties



Category: EXO (Band), VIXX
Genre: Bodyswap, M/M, also there might be antagonistic!baeksoo if you squint, because come on it's me, hyukbin is cute, kind of sort of a mafia au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 19:57:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 43,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3221477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GollumPanties/pseuds/GollumPanties
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[sort of mafia!AU] Minseok has long since stopped trying to make sense of the contradictions in his own life, so he's not sure why he's so invested in reconciling the various sides of one Jung Taekwoon. Still, he thinks that it might plague him until he figures out until exactly what he's supposed to think about this person he was trying to kill just the other day.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Originally posted for <a href="http://chansoos.livejournal.com">chansoos</a> in the <a href="http://minseokful.livejournal.com/5912.html">2014 Minseokful round</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the heart is just a bloody motor (never meant to drive)

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [И сердце — лишь мотор](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13315218) by [hespify](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hespify/pseuds/hespify)



Minseok hits the pavement. It's not particularly elegant as far as falls go; more of a sprawl than a tight roll, his shoulder making impact with more force than he would like. A split second later a bullet hits the wall right where his head had been, but by then Minseok is already scrambling forward towards the metal storage crates stacked in even rows a few yards ahead. Lu Han reaches the crate at the same time and his hand immediately shoots out to drag Minseok further into cover. More bullets sing overhead now and ping off of the crates, ricocheting in odd directions. Even though they can't see exactly how many shooters there are, from the sheer rate of fire Minseok estimates that there are at least four, maybe five of them. If that's true, then Minseok's team easily outnumbers them, but they still have the established cover and vantage points. They have the advantage.

"Fuckers!" Lu Han spits, his shoulder and arm pressed tightly against Minseok's as they crowd away from the edges. "They knew we were coming!"

"Sure looks like it," says Minseok shortly. He reloads his own gun as quickly as he can, even though he's unlikely to get a good shot in from here. Still better to be prepared. It's only when he's finished that he finally has a moment to catch his breath, shaking out his shoulder a little bit as he moves to peer around the corner. "I was only set to take care of the heavy lifting tonight, you know. If you'd told me we were likely to have company, I would have brought something a little more impressive than this."

"If I'd _known_ ," Lu Han retorts, "I would have insisted that we leave more than a skeleton lookout."

"Your intelligence-gathering is shit. And I mean, I know Jongdae's lost some weight recently, but a _skeleton_..."

"Ha ha ha," Lu Han deadpans. Anger and fear have robbed him of his usual appreciation for Minseok's jokes. "You're a regular comedian aren't y- _shit!_ "

He breaks off in mid-sentence and Minseok cranes around to see what has caught his attention. The suppressing fire has slackened somewhat, which is potentially worrying on its own, but when Minseok follows Lu Han's sharp gaze, the sight that greets him sucks the air back out of his lungs faster than the earlier impact with the concrete floor had. He sees Yifan crouching behind another line of crates closer to the center of the warehouse, more exposed than their own current hiding place, and he sees one of the gunmen coming down the stairway from the walkway above, making a wide circle around the perimeter. Minseok sees Yifan's exposed back, left open to the figure approaching, gun aimed right at his head.

Stop. Rewind.

That morning the word had come in from their paid informant that the cargo was waiting stacked and stored in the warehouse on the furthest edge of the shipyard, carefully and conveniently placed there after another series of bribes had caused the storage records and instructions to be subtly shuffled around. Yifan had complained about the amount of money they had to lay out up front, but they all knew that the payoff when they found a buyer would more than cover the necessary bribes, leaving a hefty share for each of them, so Minseok could tell he only complained for the look of the thing. Their intelligence told them that the greater part of the shipyard's workers would be out and away for machinery training, and Junmyeon's generous wallet, over Yifan's halfhearted protestations, had ensured a vacant gate and a door lock that a toddler could pick. A shipment like this, full of apparently quite valuable biomedical research material, would normally be under much heavier security, but such were the benefits of paying off the right people in the right positions. The entire operation, Minseok had thought as he slid his gun into its holster alongside spare cartridges, would be like taking candy from a baby.

Stop. Rewind.

When Minseok had first met Junmyeon and Yifan, they had only recently entered into their joint leadership of the city's only real organized crime racket. They were still being constantly trampled and cut out on every "business opportunity" by the amorphous gangs that ebbed and flowed through the city, splintering and merging together and splintering again on a monthly basis. Neither Junmyeon nor Yifan had scratched out much of a place for themselves on their own, but together they had a plan that would make them the power to be reckoned with in the area. Even with their two groups combined, they were massively outnumbered by the competition; even the addition of Minseok, and later Zitao, Jongin, and Sehun, did very little to change that. But the secret to EXO's later success was not the amount of manpower they possessed, but rather Junmyeon and Yifan's almost uncanny ability to pick the most overlooked targets and wring more profit from them than any onlooker would have believed possible. Aided by Lu Han's frankly overwhelming network of information and Junmyeon's apparently inexhaustible access to bribe money, their unbelievable luck, if that was what you wanted to call it, was what boosted EXO up the gang hierarchy to their current spot on the top of the heap.

Now.

Now it looks for a moment like that incredible luck is running thin, leaving them floundering like fish on a beach after the tide goes out, right when they needed it the most. Then Lu Han launches himself forward, out from behind the crates, sprinting forward with both guns blazing. Yifan looks back in surprise just as the gunman beats a hasty retreat, target forgotten for the time being.

"Watch your fucking back!" Lu Han snarls, not even looking at Yifan.

"Watch your fucking mouth!" Yifan shoots back, but Minseok can tell that he's rattled by the close call. 

Minseok can also tell that Lu Han is going to be in a shitton of trouble in a second when the others up on the balconies get him in their sights, so he rolls up onto the balls of his feet to dart into a better firing position. The others, scattered around the warehouse, seem to have largely the same idea because Minseok hasn't even lifted his gun when a volley hits the metal wall above, interrupting most of the remaining fire coming down. Minseok glances around and finds Kyungsoo, Junmyeon, and Yixing already firmly entrenched next to a forklift and locked into a rotating fire-reload pattern. No one seems to be hitting anything -- their rival gang's cover is too good for that -- but it means that the balance has shifted enough to let them regroup down below on the warehouse floor. 

Chanyeol slides in next to Minseok, shooting him a toothy grin that's mirrored by Baekhyun at his elbow. 

"Where are the kids?" he asks cheerfully.

"Beats me," Minseok shrugs. "Last I saw Jongin, he was standing closest to the edge. He was prepping the first carton to be loaded."

"Well," says Baekhyun, "Sehun was with him when I heard him sound the alarm, and Zitao won't have been far behind. Most of the first shots went in that direction after Sehun yelled like that." He grins again, more teeth and less humor this time. "If anything happens to them, I'll skin Jongdae alive."

"If anything happens to anyone, you'll have to get in line behind the leaders," Minseok rolls his eyes. "This was supposed to be an easy job, so you know they'll be pissed."

"What, you mean this _isn't_ an easy job?" Chanyeol's eyes are wide. "I've been _lied to_."

"Why yes, I understand how it would be difficult to tell right away," says Baekhyun, tapping a finger to his lower lip. "Scurrying from barricade to barricade, cowering from bullets, hostile hitmen holding the high ground... this has all the appearances of a walk in the park."

Minseok shakes his head. "I don't want to know what kind of walks you take or what kind of parks you're taking them in."

"Forbidden dog parks mostly," Baekhyun says absently. "Hey, did you hear that alliteration I got just then? 'Hostile hitmen holding the high ground'... d'you think Kyungsoo would appreciate that? He reads books, right? I'm gonna go ask him." He stands up and walks out into the open floor, shooting off a few bullets as he goes. "Hey, Kyungsoo! I have something to tell you!"

There are several answering shots, followed by Baekhyun's indignant squawking.

"Sorry," Minseok hears Kyungsoo's sugar-sweet apology above the noise. "You startled me. I thought you were an enemy."

The cover fire gives them enough time to start converging in the middle of the warehouse floor, the last few to arrive being Jongin, Sehun, and Zitao, once they finally peel out from behind one of the staircases where they've been hiding out of sight since the first shots were fired.

"Nice of you to join us," Lu Han rolls his eyes. One hand is tight on Minseok's arm and the other, still wrapped around a gun, jerks back and forth along the line of the walkway above as he scans for movement.

"You all looked like you could handle it," says Sehun, calm in a way that he definitely had not been when he raised the alarm.

They have instinctively pulled together into a tight knot now, a back to back circle looking out at the surrounding walls. Most of the crates stacked around the warehouse are huge metal things, but here, in the center of the floor, there sits a stack of wooden boxes, each one small enough for a single person to pick up, but surprisingly heavy and stacked up just higher than the top of Yifan's head. This is what they've come here for and this is where they all gather now, standing guard around a pile of splinter-filled wooden planks that hide their next windfall. The gunfire has died away, leaving only a tense, ringing silence in Minseok's ears. When their rivals finally emerge they appear just as wary, the two sides at a stalemate, staring across at each other from behind gunbarrels. Neither wants to be the first to speak, but Minseok can tell that neither side will easily give way. They're both here for the same thing and to back down now would mean losing more than just the shipment and the price it will garner; it will mean ground lost in the ongoing turf war that is life in this city. It will mean loss of reputation and loss of potential business contacts in the future, the heist too high-profile to go unnoticed by the rest of the city's underground. They knew going in that this could make or break their criminal careers. The thought lurks at the back of Minseok's mind even now. When the other gang starts to edge their way down the stairs, Minseok can see that they know it too.

"What's a nice mob lord like you doing in a place like this?" asks their leader, half-smirking at Junmyeon, and Minseok could just roll his eyes at the line. 

He recognizes him by sight -- Hakyeon -- the way he recognizes them all by sight. It's not the first time they've run into each other, after all. This new gang, VIXX, has been slowly pushing into their territory in a way that they can't really ignore. Cha Hakyeon, Jung Taekwoon, Lee Jaehwan, Kim Wonshik, Lee Hongbin, and Han Sanghyuk. Minseok knows all their faces by now, knows them well enough to match names to those faces, but not much more beyond that. 

"I suppose now that we're all here, it's too much to expect that you'll give up quietly and go home?" Junmyeon sounds almost exasperated.

Hakyeon shrugs one shoulder with a grin. "What kind of rivals would we be if we let you have all the fun? You're not the only one who understands spending money to make money. When we got a tip that you were planning to hit this warehouse tonight, I knew there must be something really special here and really, how could we stay away? Everyone knows you never pick a bad target, and we've been studying your methods quite closely. EXO sunbaenim, please take care of us~"

It doesn't escape Minseok's notice that they've used Hakyeon's speech to spread out across the floor, inching step by step towards the contested crates. The fact doesn't escape Yifan's notice either.

"That's far enough," he says sharply, and they all freeze in place, Jaehwan with one foot left floating comically in the air. Now that he has the floor, Yifan continues. "I'm only going to tell you this once, so listen carefully. The door is right behind you. Turn around and leave now, or so help me god, when the dust settles I cannot guarantee that all of you will leave this building." 

Minseok can _feel_ the air get more tense. Yifan's eyes are fixed on one person in particular. He looks right at Sanghyuk and oh, then Minseok understands. Hit them where it hurts. Their youngest. He knows how his team would react if anything happened to one of "the kids," so presumably Yifan is hoping that a similar protective streak runs through the other gang. Sanghyuk himself looks uncomfortable and more than a little annoyed at being singled out as the weak link, but with the way the smirk has dropped right off of Hakyeon's face it looks like Yifan's threat has hit home.

A tiny flicker of movement catches Minseok's eye a moment later. Hongbin twitches slightly, his head jerking to the side just enough to meet Taekwoon's eyes. Taekwoon nods almost imperceptibly and then in an instant they both burst into motion. Minseok barely has time to see one of Taekwoon's arms swing out and knock Sanghyuk to the ground, but then Hongbin is sprinting towards the nearest crate, hand outstretched, just a second before shots ring out from somewhere behind Minseok and that's when everything goes to hell.

The first thing that happens, just as Minseok slides his finger back onto the trigger, is that several of the bullets miss Hongbin and punch through the wooden crate at the end of the stack instead. Hongbin hits the floor and rolls behind the line of boxes just in time to miss several more rounds. The next thing that happens is that the two groups break rank, running at each other or for cover, looking around for a target or a friend. Minseok fires off a few shots that send Wonshik stumbling back to avoid them, derailing his charge towards Jongin, and then Chanyeol is there to push him back further with a more determined look than Minseok has seen on his face in a long time. The _next_ thing that happens is that the silvery smoke oozing its way out of the gunshots in the wooden crates finally seems to catch the attention of both groups. It was faint, almost invisible, when it first left the cartons and whatever it was, it was heavy enough that it sank to the floor, looking more like dust swirling around their feet than anything else. It's now up to Minseok's neck and there's enough of it in the air that it forms swirling clouds of almost opaque fog. The last thing that Minseok sees before it covers his eyes is Sehun and Yifan standing back to back, then a wave of it crashes over his head and everything goes gray.

The fog is even thicker than it had looked a second ago; now that he's engulfed in it, Minseok can't see more than a foot in front of his face. Even more disconcerting is the way it feels. It brushes up against his skin like solid cloth, feeling far more substantial than it has any right to be, and everywhere it touches starts to tingle, the same cool, bright feeling that he gets after brushing his teeth except it's all over his body instead of inside his mouth. It hits him so fast that he hasn't had enough time to draw a breath anyway, but the sensation is still enough to make him freeze up. He gropes forward towards what he hopes is the edge of the cloud, but it continues to expand out in all directions. He stumbles, tripping blindly over something that turns out to be a leg. The fog is too thick for him to even see the person's face. It could be one of their opponents or it could be... it could be one of his friends, caught in the crossfire. It could be Sehun or Jongin, or Zitao. The thought distracts him enough that he doesn't quite regain his balance in time, toppling dangerously and sucking in a hissing breath between his teeth as he flings out a hand to catch himself. 

He realizes his mistake almost instantly because the moment the fog gets into his lungs, it starts to radiate out a numbness that takes hold of his entire body. The cold ( _minty_ supplies Minseok's brain helpfully) tingling feeling is running under his skin now, spreading out from his chest into every corner of his body, each individual finger and toe, cheerfully shutting down every nerve as it goes. He hits the floor when his legs give out, but the impact feels almost cushioned to his dulled senses. At least this means whoever he tripped over earlier probably just got a lungful of this stuff rather than having been shot. Of course, whatever gas had been in those containers might very well turn out to be just as deadly as bullets, Minseok reminds himself. While he tries in vain to move a hand, he notices that the room has once again gone quiet, meaning that the gas has almost certainly gotten to them all by now. If it does turn out to be deadly, Jongdae is likely to be the only man left standing out of both gangs. Minseok wonders if the reporters will try to get a statement out of Jongdae, but then again, he's always been one of the better ones at dodging attention, so no doubt he'll long since have skipped town by then. Probably take what's left intact of the night's haul along with him, the lucky bastard. 

The paralyzing fog has completely taken hold of Minseok's body now. Even if he wanted to, he couldn't move so much as a pinky. Minseok wonders if it's seeping into his brain now too, though, because his thoughts are starting to get sluggish along with the rest of him. It feels almost like falling asleep, his mind falling into the same kind of fuzzy, nonsensical patterns. He thinks he can feel the edges of his body start to melt away. The fog is not so much eroding his outline as it is smearing it, like a hand across charcoal lines, breaking them up so that the rest of Minseok can escape, which is exactly what's happening. He feels like a blob of ink dropped into a pool and left to dissipate. It's not a particularly unpleasant sensation. It would be worrying, he's sure, only he can't muster the energy to be worried. For a moment he hangs there, suspended insubstantially in midair, a darker spot of spreading pigment in a sea of silver gray, with flickering images of recent memories fluttering around and through him. Breakfast stolen off of Lu Han's plate as payback for waking him up by flopping right on top of him, lifting Yifan's wallet without him noticing and then using the contents to fill up "the getaway van" or "the mystery machine" as Chanyeol variously calls it, sitting in the back of said van and checking his ammunition one last time as Junmyeon runs through the plan one last time, Sehun standing with his back to Yifan's as silver mist billows up around them.

Then suddenly he's falling downwards as if into a drainpipe, being poured through a funnel and condensed back into a solid shape. The ink blot of his consciousness spreads out again, this time easing into the shape of its container, held securely in a human body once again. The numbness starts to fade away again. His limbs are tingling back to life with every breath he takes. There's a sort of dull roar almost buzzing in his ears. Minseok lies there for a moment, just taking mental inventory to make sure everything is where it should be. Two arms and two legs, in roughly the right places. His feet feel a long way off, but so does most of him right now, so Minseok can chalk that one up to general disorientation. He hears various groans from the others around him, each one apparently surfacing from the same sort of muddled out-of-body experience that Minseok had gone through. He risks opening his eyes a crack and finds that most of the strange fog is gone. The sound he hears is the sound of the ventilation fans whirring in the ceiling. The noises of movement nearby are getting louder, so he stretches out a leg, surprised when it makes contact with a hard edge. He had been in the middle of the floor, on the far edge of the group away from the stacks, and he didn't _think_ he had wandered that far in the fog. When he hauls himself up into a seated position, the room wobbles slightly and he sways as if he were on a rocking boat. The faintly seasick feeling doesn't help much, to be honest. Shaking his head, Minseok leans against the nearby crates while he fumbles around for his weapons. He doesn't see his pistol nearby, but then again, he doesn't know when he dropped it. Some time after the fog started to affect him. All around the others are doing the same, patting themselves down for their weapons and belongings. Minseok frowns. He still feels unbalanced, and none of his things are where they should be. His clothes feel strange. He looks down at his legs. The ground is still a long way off, but more importantly, Minseok is fairly sure he had been wearing different pants today. He doesn't think he owns pants like this at all actually, but everything is still so groggy...

"You-" 

The strangled cry comes from right behind his head, and Minseok whirls around to see Yifan staring at him in complete horror. There's something wrong with the sight though, something nagging at him that's more unsettling than the expression on their leader's face. An instant later the thought flashes through his head that _he looks smaller_ , but then something else in the corner of his eye distracts him and no, this is much worse. Minseok is frozen in place, staring at a spot a few yards out into the middle of the floor, where he sees _himself_ staggering to his feet.

_If I'm over_ there _, then who-_

Minseok digs through his pockets until he finds a phone (not his phone, he notices), swiping frantically at the screen until he pulls up the camera. Sure enough, instead of his own face, he sees _Sehun_ staring back at him, looking stunned.

"Oh my god," he says faintly.

Yifan reaches around him ( _no wonder he looks smaller_ ) to grab the phone out of his hands. "Give me that," he demands, holding up the camera to get a good look at himself. If possible, he looks even more distraught than before at the sight that greets him. " _Why?_ " he wails. "How could this happen to me? At least before I was good looking! It was all I had going for me!"

"Hey!" Hakyeon, halfway across the room, looks deeply offended. Or... whoever's in Hakyeon's body now? Minseok rubs his-- or rather, Sehun's-- face. This is so fucked up.

Holy shit, I'm tall!" Taekwoon's face is definitely not meant to hold such an expression of unholy glee. Kyungsoo's eyes are wide, and not with sugarcoated fury the way Minseok is used to seeing them. Hongbin, helping Sanghyuk to his feet, shudders slightly. Sanghyuk pats his hand comfortingly, but he seems equally perturbed by the sight.

"What's going on in here?" Jongdae flings open the door to the warehouse, hand clamped over his mouth and nose. "I came in to see what all the fuss was, and there was smoke everywhere! You're lucky I could reach the switch for the fans and didn't just leave you here to asphyxiate. What did you _do_?" He looks over at Junmyeon but all he gets in response is a blank stare. 

"What about you?" the body formerly known as Hakyeon demands. "You were on lookout so we _wouldn't_ get ambushed. What, did you decide to catch up on your beauty sleep or something?"

Jongdae blinks at him before turning to the rest of the room, now thoroughly confused. Minseok knows the feeling far better than he would like right now. "Okay, now I _really_ need an explanation," says Jongdae.

"This is going to sound strange, but don't say anything until I finish," whoever is in Baekhyun's body holds up a finger. "As far as I can tell, the smoke you blew away somehow shuffled our minds around into each other's bodies when we inhaled it." He blinks at the sound of his voice and pulls the phone out of his pocket to check his reflection the way Minseok had a minute ago. He closes his eyes in mute horror. "On second thought, it might have actually been kinder to let us asphyxiate."

"So wait," says the person in Minseok's body and Minseok hadn't thought it could get weirder than watching himself stand up from across the room, but hearing his own voice is actually infinitely stranger. "Who are you then?"

It's unsettling to see Baekhyun's usually open face close off that quickly. "Who are _you_?" he counters.

"I'm-" 

The dumbfounded look on his face is so familiar that Minseok almost laughs. It's a very Lu Han expression, which is simultaneously hilarious and disturbing. While probably not the worst of options, the prospect of having Lu Han in his body fills Minseok with a sort of dread. Unfortunately any humor in the situation is dampened somewhat when the importance of this exchange dawns on him. None of them know who anyone else is, save for Jongdae, and even if they were to announce their identities now, none of them have any reason to trust each other. Minseok could claim to be Chanyeol right now and no one except the real Chanyeol would have any good way of verifying that. Minseok already has his suspicions about several of them, just from his limited observation, but none of them have a reason to come out and tell the truth just yet when the potential for trickery is still out there.

However, at the moment all this means is that they're left staring at each other across the warehouse in the back corner of the shipyard with no clue as to what to do next.

"Anyone have any ideas?" asks "Chanyeol" dryly. No one answers him for a long moment.

"You mean other than 'get back into the right bodies'?" the person in Yifan's body says with a sneer. Almost certainly Sehun, thinks Minseok to himself.

"Well, I, for one, would also like to get paid," says Jongdae. "Just putting that out there. So maybe we could take this somewhere that doesn't have guards patrolling everywhere? Even ones we've paid off?"

"Good idea," says whoever is in Yixing's body, taking a step forward. "We'll just take these and-"

Several people have their guns out and pointed at him before he can even lay a hand on the crate. Those remaining have their guns out a second later, pointing them at anyone else pointing guns. Minseok finds himself with his pistol trained on Junmyeon, who has a gun pointed at Jongin. No matter who is in Junmyeon or Jongin's body at the moment, Minseok is not keen on watching one of their young proteges bleed out on the floor because of a hastily-pulled trigger. Junmyeon's eyes meet his. Whoever is in there blinks steadily, and the hand holding the gun doesn't waver even as he holds Minseok's gaze.

"Okay," says "Yixing" quickly and takes a step back again. "I think everyone needs to calm down. We're all overreacting and-"

"'Overreacting'?" Baekhyun's lip curls slightly. "We've swapped bodies, in case you haven't noticed. I'm not sure it's possible to overreact to this."

"I could be on your side, for all you know," argues "Yixing," somewhat lamely.

"You could just as easily not," says "Baekhyun." "I have no way of knowing. None of us do. Why should any of us let anyone else leave with the cargo?"

"What are we supposed to do then?" demands "Wonshik." He gets a half shrug in response.

"I don't have an answer to the situation," says "Baekhyun" simply. "I was just pointing out that it is hardly in our best interests to let anyone else leave with anything."

"So if no one is going to leave the stuff behind, then we need to stick together," Minseok finally says. "Which means we need somewhere big enough to store both it and us."

Their own headquarters are more than big enough for the task, but even if they can get through all the security that the leaders insist on, Minseok doesn't think anyone will be keen on bringing unknown rivals into their base of operations. Though he has no idea as to the size of their location, the same concerns would naturally hold true for the VIXX headquarters. Which leaves them in the position of finding a third, more neutral location.

Jongdae looks around. "I might know a place," he says slowly. Everyone turns to look at him. "It's a house a little way outside the city. Junmyeon knows what I mean, right?" He turns to look at "Junmyeon", who just stares back at him. "Uh. Right," Jongdae says. "Well, wherever he is, Junmyeon knows about it. It's that place he gave me the key for a while back."

"Wait," says the person in Taekwoon's body. "Is this that lake house you were bragging about like three months ago? The one that's a safe house but you were rubbing in our face like it was a vacation luxury spa?"

"Yeah, that's it," Jongdae agrees. "The one his family used to own, I think. Never actually seen it, but it sounds great and you know them. Really old, filthy rich crime family? It's gotta be a mansion."

Minseok notices "Yixing" carefully examining his nails as Jongdae talks. Junmyeon has a good poker face when he actually thinks about it, but something about his friends seems to set him enough at ease that he never thinks to turn it on, so he tends to be painfully easy for anyone who knows him to read. Most of them are still focused on Jongdae, but Minseok catches... well, his _own_ eye. He doesn't think that it's his imagination that spots Lu Han's glimmer of humor when he realizes that they've both come to the same conclusion about "Yixing's" identity. 

"That sounds fine to me," says what Minseok thinks is Lu Han, once they break eye contact. "Chanyeol" and "Sanghyuk" look especially displeased, but they do not protest.

"That house is owned by an EXO leader," points out "Junmyeon". It's the first time he's spoken, Minseok realizes, and is much more restrained than Junmyeon is usually wont to be. 

"Right," says "Kyungsoo", "So we- I mean, if we decide to use this place -- and I wish I had a better idea, but I don't -- then we have to load up all this stuff and take it with us into one gang's private territory. How do we know we won't get screwed over?"

"We never agreed to give you anything in the first place," "Yifan" snaps. "Literally the only reason no one's shooting anyone else right now is because we don't know who to shoot. Our people were here first and we don't owe anyone anything, especially not the people who attacked us first."

For a moment it looks like the fight is about break out anew. The guns that had drifted down to their sides now snapping up again as their owners bristle at "Yifan's" words. Minseok groans to himself. Sehun is a sweet kid most of the time, but he has this knack for saying exactly the thing that will piss off everyone the most right when it's the least convenient. Standing on the tipping point of a gang shootout is definitely not the time to ruffle feathers, but that's exactly what is happening and they are two seconds away from someone getting a bullet in the head and losing all the night's profits. 

"Let's just... think about this, okay?" "Hongbin" holds up his hands as placatingly as possible. "We've all got the same problem right now, don't we? We can't figure out who gets anything-" he looks at "Yifan" here "-until we know who everyone is, so before we can actually do anything else we need to do is get back into the right bodies. Right?"

"Yixing" nods. "Can we all just agree to put this stuff in storage until we figure out how to get back to normal?"

"Then we can shoot them and be done with it," sighs "Yifan".

"Or we can come to a solution that will benefit everyone," "Yixing" glares.

No one seems overly pleased with the plan, but no one else argues further so they fumble around in various pockets until they find car keys and can maneuver their vans into the warehouse side-by-side and load them up with as many of the wooden crates as they can fit. If the members of VIXX manage to get a few more into their own van, Minseok can't quite blame them. If he were the one driving into a rival's safe house, he would want as much material security as he could get his hands on too. Once the vans are packed with as many crates as they can possibly hold, Jongdae looks around.

"We all have to get to the house, so I either have to give someone the address or you have to follow me," he says. "And I'm not planning to make it easy to catch me. We've hung around here too long already and I'm not keen on getting busted."

"Jaehwan" holds up a hand and jangles the keys loudly. "I guess I'm driving?" he asks.

"Give me your phone and I'll program it into the GPS." Jongdae holds out a hand and then stops, realizing. "Wait. Does it have a passcode?"

They both look at the phone. They turn it over a couple times and Jongdae wrinkles his nose. Around the room, everyone else is pulling out the phones in their possession and poking at them. Minseok doesn't think any of them would leave their phone unlocked, but at that moment "Zitao" lets out a choked laugh.

"Apple phone is best phone," he whispers in glee. "Fingerprint locks are yes."

"Jongin" makes an incoherent noise and snatches the phone out of his hand. "Stay out of there!" he demands. "It's not yours!"

"Is very mine! I'm Zitao!"

"No, you're not! And that's not even- the real Zitao speaks better Korean than that!"

"I am Zitao so I know! I speak good!"

Minseok rolls his eyes. At least now everyone knows where Zitao has ended up. That makes... He tallies it up in his head. Four of his teammates whose locations he's at least ninety percent sure of. Sehun is in Yifan's body, Junmyeon is in Yixing's body, Zitao is in Jongin's body, and Lu Han is in Minseok's own body. That last one is definitely something he's going to have to deal with before too much time passes. Minseok also has some suspicion of where Yifan himself ended up, but he'll have to observe further before he can be sure. To make things more complicated, he knows that at least Kyungsoo is someone from VIXX, even if he doesn't know exactly who, and there are bound to be more cross-gang switches. The entire thing is giving him a headache. If they could just agree to tell the truth about their identities, everything would be so much easier. One step at a time though. 

"Let's take all the phones and give them to Jongdae then," he suggests, ignoring the outraged shouts that follow. "None of us want anyone else getting into our things and it's not like we can get them back to their owners right now."

"You're not giving my stuff to your buddy to break into," says "Chanyeol" grumpily. "No way."

"What, do you keep classified information on your cell phone?" Lu Han counters from where he's settled against the back doors of EXO's van like a guard dog. "If you do, then you deserve everything that happens to you. Your bosses should've taught you better than that."

"Jongdae's the only one that we know is who he says he is," Minseok persisted. "You can all watch him put them in a safe or something and no one will touch them until we sort this out."

"The building is old," says Junmyeon, his pleased expression looking weird on Yixing's calm face, "but I had a couple new features installed. There's an electric safe where we can set as long a password as we want. Everyone can enter two or three digits and that way we'll all have to be working together to get our things back out again. We can agree that nothing leaves that safe until we either get our right bodies back or until we come to some other agreement."

It seems that this, like all of their decisions tonight, is reached only with the reluctant realization that, while no one likes it, they simply have no other options. With no way to actually prove ownership, no one can come up with a better solution for getting their hands back on their own phones and belongings, so Jongdae goes around with a toolbox that he's emptied out into the corner and makes sure that they have all eighteen phones stacked inside. After some debate, wallets and the other contents of their pockets follow a moment later. When everything they want to keep safe has been safely stored, Jongdae shoves the box between two stacks of crates in the back of VIXX's van, brushing his hands as he stands back.

"Are we all okay now?" he asks with a sarcastic quirk. "No one's worried that anyone's going to be reading their top secret emails or anything? Can we finally get out of here?"

The driving setup is decided quickly since the two people already in possession of the keys agree to drive and no one cares enough to argue that at least, leaving them only to divide themselves up into two vans. They manage this with a minimum of arguing and confusion as well, which is stunning, Minseok thinks, considering most of the people they have to deal with right now. The reality of their predicament seems to finally be sinking in for the group at large, and however they may grudge having to work together, for the time being they don't have much of a choice. Minseok winds up in the middle row of EXO's own van, his newly acquired long legs bunched up awkwardly behind Jongdae's seat. The back gate is still left unattended, as per the agreement they'd struck with the shipyard supervisors, so there's no one to see them leave. 

True to his word, Jongdae does not travel at an easy pace, but they never quite lose the van behind them. Minseok has seen Jongdae when he wants to lose cars tailing him, so he can tell that he's carefully calculating the distance he needs to stay within to keep from leaving the others behind in the dark. They leave the city limits and Jongdae pulls off the main highway almost right away, winding along smaller and smaller roads that disappear into the surrounding forest. Before long their headlights on the road ahead and the bobbing lights of the van behind are the only things Minseok can see. Jongdae's phone, propped up in a stand on the dashboard, says that their destination is about an hour's drive away from the city, but Jongdae manages to get them there in forty minutes, even when halfway there the roads turn into gravel and dirt paths. The house itself looms up like a massive black mountain against the night sky. The headlights shine onto a broken slate walkway leading up to a sprawling porch. The building, or what Minseok can see of it, looks beautiful but abandoned. It's certainly big enough to hold them all, but it's not the sort of place Minseok would pick to stay in for any length of time. The windows are boarded up and the grass is so overgrown that it nearly reaches the window ledges on the first floor. Minseok has seen haunted houses look more inviting than this place does. Jongdae shuts off the engine and grabs a flashlight off of the floor of the car before climbing out to stand alongside the rest of them. 

"Okay, he said it was old, but this is just ridiculous," Jongdae frowns.

Behind them, the other van rumbles up the driveway. Minseok hears Kyungsoo's voice screech out from inside when the other driver jolts to a stop with an audible bump against a thick tree. The parking brake is barely on when they all tumble out in a far less orderly fashion that the occupants of the previous car had, with "Kyungsoo" right in the lead. He rushes over to the front of the car, letting out a sort of pained gurgle at the sight of the dent the tree has left in the van's hood.

"Oh my god!" he screeches. "I would never have let you drive if I'd known you were _blind_! What, were you parking by braille? The tree was right fucking there! Would it have killed you to, I don't know, just tap the brakes a little instead of waiting for a solid object to break your momentum?"

"Give me a break," "Jaehwan" shrugs. He looks completely unaffected. "It's my first time driving. I think I did pretty okay." He walks past the line of stunned faces, each showing various degrees of horror, and up onto the porch to try the front door. "Hey, who has the key to this place?"

"Get the car keys away from him," says "Kyungsoo" faintly. "Someone. Please."

"Oh my god, we could have died." Sanghyuk and Hongbin's forms are still almost surgically attached, as far as Minseok can tell. Either they already know who each of them is, or they don't care, but Minseok doesn't think he can recognize anyone from his own team in that duo.

By the time Jongdae fishes the key out of some back compartment of his wallet, everyone has crowded around the door behind him, each craning forward to be the first to get a glimpse into their new lodgings. It's not as bad as it could be, Minseok thinks when the door finally swings open. It's dark at first, but when someone finds the light switch the warm glow from the lamps makes the place look far less haunted. There's dust everywhere, over the floors and tables and the chairs covered with sheets. There are more than a few spiderwebs as well, which they discover when "Jongin" walks through a doorway without checking it first. The screams that follow are very Zitao-like and Minseok didn't know Jongin's throat was even capable of the same noises that he's used to hearing from Zitao, but the pitch and volume is exactly the same as he remembers, which is comforting in a way. Anything vaguely familiar right now is bound to be comforting, he thinks. 

He catches "Junmyeon" watching the scene with an unreadable expression for a long while before, as if he can feel the eyes on him, he turns to look back at Minseok. It's the same slow blink he'd given Minseok before with Minseok's gun pointed at his head. It's a far steadier look than Junmyeon ever has, steadier than Minseok is used to seeing from just about anyone except Kyungsoo or Yixing. It's not that Junmyeon doesn't focus, because he does, but in those cases he gets an almost compressed look to his face, like he's building physical barriers between himself and any distractions. This is the same distance that Kyungsoo's eyes sometimes get when he consciously detaches himself from a situation and it's the same nearly unflappable calm that Yixing is so good at. This is someone used to observing from the edges of a crowd, venturing in only when required, so different from Junmyeon's need to stick himself in the middle of every conflict as if he hopes to unravel it from the inside. All of a sudden Minseok feels very tired. Life was hard enough just trying to scratch out a place for themselves in the city's criminal underbelly without at the same time having to try to guess who's looking at him and wearing his friends' faces. He wants to go to sleep and wake up to find that this has all been an absurd dream.

Before he can fall into a bed, however, there are crates to unload into the house's basement. Minseok isn't surprised to find that half of the massive concrete room is taken up with a safe that looks like it was taken straight from a bank's vaults. In the interests of fairness and calm tempers, everyone watches Jongdae lock the safe once all the wooden crates are stacked up inside so that they can memorize the combination. The physical bar and padlock seem almost like an afterthought, but it leaves them with a key to lock inside the smaller electric safe upstairs along with all the cell phones and wallets. It might be more symbolic than anything (Minseok is fairly sure any one of them could either pick the basement safe's lock or break it in one way or another), but they're grateful for every little bit of security they can get. But even once this is all done, the others can't agree on a sleeping arrangement that will satisfy them all. Since the bedrooms are scattered across the house's multiple floors, there is a considerable amount of debate over who gets the rooms closest to the basement and who gets rooms connected to other rooms and with every single minute that passes Minseok thinks he's going just a little bit more insane.

"You know what," he says after fifteen straight minutes of listening to them go at it, "I'm too tired to stand here and listen to you all. You can stand here until sunrise, but I'm going up those stairs and I'm taking the very first bed I see and if you don't like it you can tell me about it _in the morning_."

He ignores the surprised looks from everyone else in favor of flinging open the door back into the entrance hall (what kind of lake house has an _entrance hall_ anyway) as loudly as he can, taking the stairs two at a time  with Sehun's long legs. His plan develops a hitch when the first room he storms into turns out to have an occupant already. For the third time this night, he finds himself stared at with Junmyeon's face bearing a distinctly un-Junmyeon expression. This time underneath the fixed stare he thinks he can see the faintest suggestion of surprise, but even that is infuriatingly brief considering that he just burst into the room loudly and without warning. No one should be allowed to look so unperturbed in the middle of this clusterfuck. Minseok hadn't even seen him sneak away. He's already got the boards off the windows and the bedclothes pulled out of the chest at the foot of the bed, so it must have been early in the discussion. He doesn't say anything. He just stands there in the middle of the floor, halfway through the process of pulling his shirt off, staring at Minseok expectantly. When Minseok clenches his fists even that sensation feels different enough from what he's used to that he thinks he might scream.

"I'm sorry," Minseok says, utterly unapologetically. "I didn't know you were up here, or I would have knocked. I'll just go find somewhere else to wait until I wake up from this godawful nightmare."

He doesn't even wait for a response, but turns on his heel and makes for the very next door down the hall. The room looks like it hasn't been touched in a year at least, judging from the levels of dust everywhere, but Minseok only drags out an armful of blankets and dumps them into a sort of nest on the middle of the mattress before climbing in himself and flopping down. He's facing the wall now and it's only then that he notices the second door in the wall, connecting it back to the room next to him.

_Well, just let him try to murder me in my sleep,_ Minseok thinks grumpily. _I'd like to see him try._

Minseok doesn't _think_ that any of them would try to attack any of the others, just out of fear of accidentally hurting a teammate by mistake, but it probably can't hurt to be careful. He untangles himself just long enough to find a chair and wedge it under the doorknob before he's back in bed with a huge yawn. He hadn't been lying when he said that he was too tired to listen to everyone argue. Whether due to the excitement, or the actual process of swapping bodies with someone else, or even because he was now stuck in the body of a sleepy teenager, Minseok was asleep almost before his head hit the mattress. In that brief moment between closing his eyes and unconsciousness, he thought he could hear the vague sounds of the others filtering up the stairs into the other rooms, but they melted right away into murky dream sounds so that he couldn't be sure he had heard anything at all. He sleeps for what was probably hours because when a loud noise jolts him awake, he has that lurking sense that the recently-awoken get sometimes that there had been complete silence until just a second ago. A moment later the door to his room swings open and a figure bolts across the floor, landing half on the bed and half on Minseok in a pile of limbs. Obviously he'd forgotten to barricade the door out into the hall like he'd done to the other connecting door.

"Wha-?" Minseok croaks.

"I don't care if you're a horrible, murdering psycho or not, I'm staying here," a voice hiccups. "A massive death bird with ten-foot claws just flew in through my window. I'm not going back in there even if you kill me."

Minseok sighs. He recognizes both the voice and the tone of the words, though they don't usually go together. "Go to sleep, Lu Han," he says, kicking the other man a little bit off of him. "I'm not going to kill you unless you snore. And even then I might just kick you onto the floor, depending on how loud you are."

Even after being startled awake, Minseok finds it easier than usual to fall back asleep. The house settles back into silence except for the sound of the person breathing in bed next to him, and just lying there with his eyes shut makes it easier to believe that nothing has changed at all from the way it was that morning.

 

When he wakes up again, daylight is peeking through the boards nailed across the windows. They block out most of the light, but it's enough to make out a lump lying draped halfway across Minseok's stomach. The lump is snoring loudly. Minseok responds to the situation in the way he usually does, namely by wriggling his way further up the bed until he has good leverage to get his feet planted on the lump's side and kick it right off the edge. He listens for the thud and the pained shriek, frowning when it sounds wrong, the pitch ever so slightly off.

"Lu Han?" he climbs over to look over the edge and nearly joins his victim on the floor when he sees what is clearly his own face pouting up at him. "Fuck."

"That hurt," Lu Han complains. "You always do that and- what?"

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck _fuck_!" Minseok is doubled over on the bed, clutching his hair in frustration. Or rather, Sehun's hair. It hadn't been a dream.

The bed dips slightly when Lu Han joins him on the mattress again. He doesn't say anything, and Minseok doesn't have to look at him to know that he's staring at the ceiling as if he'll magically find the right thing to say written up there in big, red letters.

"At least you're the tall one now?" Lu Han ventures, which is not the right thing to say of course, but it drags a laugh out of Minseok anyway. "Oh, wait no," Lu Han continues with a lilt, encouraged by the sound. "That just means now I'll be asking _you_ to get stuff off the shelves all the time."

"You're an asshole," Minseok tells him. "And also rude. I never asked you to get anything off shelves for me."

"No," Lu Han agrees cheerfully, "I did it anyway because you're so cute. And now I'm the cute one, so you better be nice to me. I think you bruised your own tailbone just then."

Minseok stops. Much as he would like to pretend like everything is the same as before, he actually has to think through their current situation. "How do you know who I am?" he asks carefully.

"How do you know who _I_ am?" counters Lu Han. "The same way I know who you are. I know _you_. You figured it out last night, didn't you? That's why you didn't kick me out of the room or try to shank me. Which would be a spectacularly bad move, by the way, because I'm in your body here, in case you hadn't noticed."

"Trust me, I'd noticed," says Minseok dryly. He shrugs. "I don't have anything to shank you with anyway. And I couldn't see anything, but there's only one person who would run screaming into my bed in the middle of the night because a giant bird tried to kill them. Even Zitao would claim ghosts as an excuse."

"How dare you put the death bird on the same level as Zitao's ghosts," Lu Han frowns. "It was a legitimate fear. When you see it, you won't be laughing. The thing tried to kill me. And what do you mean you don't have a shiv or something? You're slipping."

"Where would I get a shiv?" Minseok gestures around at the room's bare contents. "There's barely even a matchbox in here."

Lu Han stands up to poke around the room, pulling the closet door open and peering under covering sheets at the room's admittedly sparse furnishings.

"Ah-ha!" he crows triumphantly, pulling one of the sheets to the floor. "Glass shards will do the trick."

"There are no glass shards here and- _don't you dare break that mirror_!" Minseok manages to catch Lu Han's hand, wrapped in a balled-up wad of the sheet, before he smashes the vanity mirror with his fist.

"What?" Lu Han stares up at him. "I know you're not superstitious."

"No, but I don't want sixteen other people piling into this room to find out why they heard something smash." Minseok looks around for something to hand Lu Han that's not broken glass. "Here, how about this?" He picks up one of his shoes off the floor where he'd kicked it the night before and tries to use it to pry one of the boards off of the window. Lu Han snatches the shoe out of his hand.

"What are you doing?" he demands. "One, like that's going to work. Two, how are you going to keep the death bird out if you unblock the window? Learn from my mistake! I need somewhere to hide now that it's turned my room into its lair."

"If it's got your room as its lair then why would it come into mine?" Minseok raises an eyebrow. "One board less isn't going to make much of a difference anyway, and it'll work as a club for me to chase the pigeon out of your room with."

"Death pigeon," Lu Han insists, but he hands Minseok back his shoe anyway. 

He's right about it not working well as a crowbar, but luckily for them the wood around the nails has weakened enough that after about fifteen minutes of work the board finally creaks and comes free. The rusty nails are a nice touch, Minseok thinks. They certainly go a long way to make up for how awkward it feels to be holding what is essentially a two-by-four and tiptoeing across the hall to the beast's lair, right in plain sight of anyone who might come out of their room at that moment. The house is still silent, however, with no signs that anyone else is stirring. Minseok shifts the club so that he can grab the doorknob. Lu Han is pressed almost flat against his back, standing on his toes to see over Minseok's shoulder, but since he's in Minseok's body the height difference is enough to make that difficult so he ends up nearly piggybacked on Minseok in his eagerness to find a safe vantage point.

"No wonder the thing flew into your room," Minseok snaps in a half-whisper. "You're practically a bird of prey yourself. Stop trying to perch on my shoulder, you're hurting me."

"Let it be a lesson to you to trim your nails properly," Lu Han whispers back. It seems almost perfunctory, though, since all his attention is focused on the tiny sliver between door and doorframe as Minseok turns the knob and pushes. 

The door swings open noiselessly to show a room very much like the one Minseok spent the night in. It's much lighter, which might have something to do with the piles of splintered boards piled underneath the windows. Minseok is not sure how he slept through what must have been a huge racket going on right across the hall. There is no fluttering of massive wings when he steps further into the room, no raptor swooping down silently on him like prey, so he lowers the club just a bit.

"I don't see anything," he says. "Are you sure it's in here? Maybe it was your imagination."

Lu Han just gives him a look. Minseok is pleased with the effect and makes a note to stare at people like they're idiots more often in the future. His face is quite good at the expression, and it's not like he won't have ample opportunity for it. "If you suggest one more time that I was making it up," Lu Han says, "I will kick your ass all the way to HQ and back and then let Sehun take it out on you when he gets a bruised body back. I may not be sure it's here now, but I'm sure it _was_ here." He edges around the room to pick up a splintered piece of wood, much smaller than Minseok's own, before edging towards the bed and the rumpled pile of blankets there.

"Are you vampire hunting?" Minseok asks. "What are you going to do, stake it?"

"Either shut up or make yourself useful," says Lu Han tersely. He doesn't take his eyes off the bed. Minseok rolls his eyes, but starts to approach the bed from the other side.

When Lu Han gets right up to the bedside, he hesitates. Minseok is the one to reach out instead. He takes hold of one of the folds and looks up to meet Lu Han's eyes, waiting for him to nod before flinging back the covers in one swift motion. Lu Han sucks in a breath through his teeth, and even Minseok finds himself bracing for whatever vicious creature springs out from underneath.

There's nothing there.

At least, nothing jumps out at them. It doesn't take much inspection to notice the small holes poked into the bottom layer of sheets and the tiny smears of what can only be blood on the off-white fabric. Minseok leans in closer to get a good look, while Lu Han twitches the covers further back. Shoved under one of the bottom-most folds they find a mangled ball of fur that was probably once something skittery and squeaky, but which is now sad and damp.

"See?" Lu Han points. "I knew there was something in here! That could have been me!"

Minseok stares at him for a moment, trying to figure out if he's making another short joke, but Lu Han just looks back at him with a smug expression. "I don't think it could have done this to you," Minseok says finally. "It was probably an owl or something. Its shadow probably made it look bigger than it was. Just get rid of this thing and find some new blankets and you'll be fine." 

Lu Han looks like he'd like to argue further, but Minseok is already dropping the makeshift club into a corner before going to look out the window. The house was certainly not what they had all been expecting, but Junmyeon hadn't been lying when he called it a lake house. Off some way from the house, glittering between the trees, Minseok can see the sunlight reflecting off the water's surface. There's a path leading away from the house and into the woods that looks like it was well-traveled once, but the bushes on either side have overgrown it a little too much to make it look welcoming. Still, it's something to explore, he thinks.

"I'm hungry." Minseok turns around to see Lu Han standing in the middle of the floor with his (Minseok's) hands on his (also Minseok's) hips. Lu Han stares back at him. "I'm going to go see if anyone thought to bring any food," he says.

"I highly doubt it," Minseok begins, but breaks off almost spluttering when Lu Han turns on his heel and marches towards the door. "Hey, wait! You can't just walk down there!"

"Yes, I can," Lu Han says, and makes to illustrate his point.

"You can't just walk down there looking like that," Minseok corrects himself. "You're only wearing my boxers."

"If I'm you right now, doesn't that make them _my_ boxers?" Lu Han muses. "Just because I'm not a heathen who sleeps in their clothes-" he looks pointedly at Minseok, eyes sweeping up and down Sehun's fully-clothed body "-doesn't mean I have to be kept from my breakfast. And why's it matter anyway? After all, nobody here but us chickens. And... owl-gutted corpse."

"You just can't," Minseok repeats. "My body, my rules."

Lu Han heaves a sigh. "Spoilsport," he mutters, but at least he scoops up the clothes off the floor and shakes them out. He wrinkles his nose at the tshirt, still stained with sweat and dust from the warehouse floor, but puts it on anyway. "Good enough?" he asks. Minseok grudgingly nods. "Great, let's go."

A quick inspection of the kitchen downstairs turns up nothing but empty cabinets and an unplugged refrigerator. Minseok lies down, wiggling himself behind the appliance to find the outlet, while Lu Han stands in the corner and bangs his head repeatedly against a cabinet door.

"Stop that," Minseok tells him. "You'll bruise my forehead."

"Who's bruising what?" a new voice says from the doorway, and Minseok slides quickly out from behind the refrigerator to see who it is. Hakyeon stands in the doorway, eyes still half-closed and hand scratching at his stomach while he looks back and forth between them. "Minseok? Sehun? What is it?" he asks.

"Who are you?" Lu Han asks cautiously.

"What?" All they get is a confused look.

"Have you looked in a mirror this morning?" Minseok asks. Hakyeon shakes his head, so Minseok reaches over to tilt the toaster's mirrored steel surface up towards his face. "Here."

Hakyeon's eyebrows crease, but he leans forward to get a good look anyway and almost immediately jerks back. His eyes are no longer sleepy-looking. He clutches his chest and looks distraught. "You mean that wasn't a dream?" he moans.

"No such luck," Minseok says. "Trust me, I was hoping the same thing."

"That doesn't answer our question though," says Lu Han. "Who are you?"

"Hakyeon's" frown deepens. "I seem to recall that question being a problem last night," he says. "Even if I told you, would you believe me?"

"Depends," shrugs Minseok. "Would you believe us if we told you who _we_ are?"

"We have ideas about most of the others already," Lu Han adds, "so I don't think it's going to stay a secret for long. Too many of us know each other too well. If it helps, I'm pretty sure you're on our side."

"And which side is that?" asks "Hakyeon," though he sounds like he's coming to the same conclusion already.

Lu Han grins then. "The side of Right, of course." 

Minseok has to resist the urge to facepalm. Now is not the time for provoking evasions, but since when has Lu Han ever cared about that? "We're EXO, of course," he says, stepping in. "You are too, right?"

"Hakyeon's" face finally relaxes the rest of the way, like hearing it aloud is enough to confirm whatever he'd already half-decided. "Yeah," he agrees. 

Minseok decides to go the whole nine yards. "I'm Minseok," he says. "And that's Lu Han." He ignores Lu Han's pursed lips. They'll all have to relax enough to reveal their identities eventually, and with the warm sunlight trickling in through the faded kitchen curtains it seems hard to keep up the same level of suspicion as last night. "I know you're not Sehun, Junmyeon, or Zitao."

"Or Kyungsoo, Baekhyun, or Jongin," adds Lu Han. "That leaves what? Three more possibilities?"

"I'm Yifan," says not-Hakyeon carefully. 

Lu Han nods, satisfied. "I didn't really think you were Chanyeol," he says.

"And Yixing?" asks probably-Yifan. "You could probably rule him out too."

"I wouldn't put anything past Yixing," Lu Han waves a hand. "I practically grew up with him and I still bet I couldn't pick him out of this group if he didn't want me to. You could just as easily have been him."

"But you believe me?" 

"Yixing would be trying to mess with our heads more," shrugs Lu Han. "He's a right bastard, that one."

Almost-certainly-Yifan looks at Minseok questioningly, but Minseok just shakes his head with a little 'don't look at me' shrug so he doesn't say anything. Minseok leans back against the fridge, which reminds him of their most recent problem.

"I don't suppose you know where any food is?" he asks. Lu Han stops grinning, also remembering the problem of the empty kitchen.

Yifan looks at the cabinets. "That's what I came down to check on. There's nothing here?"

Lu Han opens the cabinet at his elbow. "I can get you... a crumbling box of baking soda?" He closes it again and resumes banging his head against it.

"I told you to stop that," Minseok frowns.

"I guess we have to get some food," says Yifan helplessly. "Someone's going to have to go to the store, but I don't have a key to either of the cars anymore. My spare got put in the safe, I think."

"Was anyone else showing signs of waking up when you came down?" Minseok asks.

"Not as far as I know," Yifan says apologetically. 

Lu Han groans piteously. "We're going to _die_."

"We're not going to die," Minseok tells him. Lu Han bangs his head against the cabinet one more time for good measure before sliding down to sit slumped on the tiled floor.

Since Lu Han seems intent on moping until he gets food, Minseok shoves a glass of water into his hands -- at least a search of the upper cabinets produced some dishes -- and drags him out to lie on one of the sheet-covered sofas until they can find someone to go get food. Minseok drops into an armchair next to him, while Yifan  takes one across the room. They sit there, staring at each other in a silence that's only broken when one of their stomachs growls.

The dust stirred up when they moved in hangs drifting in a beam of light. Minseok can see the individual motes drifting lazily, so he watches them like fish or like raindrops on a window to distract himself from his growing hunger. He could check his watch (Sehun wears a watch, right?) but it would only irritate him. A watched pot never boils. Instead, he watches the dust swirl in the air currents, following one particular particle as it drifts in close to the window and then further away again, swirling down in a crooked spiral before landing on Lu Han's cheek. Or Minseok's cheek, as it happens to be at the moment. Minseok could think about that too, but it's possibly an even less appealing thought than how hungry he is. It feels like hours that they spend like that, watching the dust move and Lu Han finish his huge glass of water, but slowly the sounds of people waking up filter through the ceiling. Someone starts singing loudly and off key, which would be Baekhyun, even if the voice is unfamiliar, and then that's followed by the sound of someone protesting grumpily in a voice that is clearly Lu Han's, even if the tone is rougher. Lu Han's head turns over from where he's laid it against the back of the sofa.

"That's weird as hell," he says to himself.

_You're telling me,_ Minseok thinks, watching him.

The sounds from upstairs get louder as more and more voices join in. None of them sound particularly happy, and there are more than one loud outbursts, which the three downstairs completely ignore.

"Do you think Junmyeon has a hidden stash of money somewhere in the house?" Lu Han thinks out loud. "I could eat the contents of an entire grocery aisle right now."

"I'm sure he does," Yifan nods. 

Someone comes stomping down the stairs just then, and the door to the living room swings open to reveal a furious-looking Baekhyun. He glares around at all of them before stalking through the room in the direction of the kitchen.

"There's nothing there!" Lu Han calls after him. They hear strangled yelling followed by cabinet doors opening and slamming shut. More muffled curses and then not-Baekhyun storms through again, kicking open the door to the entrance hall before disappearing again. They hear the front door slam and then everything is quiet again.

"That was definitely Kyungsoo," says Lu Han sagely.

"How can you tell?" Yifan asks.

"Barely-contained rage, purposeful stride, mental breakdown at waking up to find no food or coffee?" Lu Han looks out at the door. "Definitely Kyungsoo. Probably even angrier after realizing that he really is stuck in that body."

"You think?" Yifan muses.

"I _know_." Lu Han sounds confident. Neither of them argue with him. There's a reason Lu Han's always been in charge of intelligence in their group and Minseok's not about to doubt him now.

The next person to come down the stairs stops in the doorway and blinks at them for a moment. Minseok looks up to meet his eyes and recognizes the occupant of the room next to his, staring right back at him with Junmyeon's eyes. He doesn't say anything. Minseok watches him shuffle across the room, following Kyungsoo's earlier path into the kitchen until he turns the corner into the other room. There's another long silence that stretches out longer than any of them expect it to.

"Do you think he's alright?" Yifan asks.

"Who cares?" Lu Han yawns. "He's not one of ours, that much is sure."

Minseok stands up, shaking his head at the still-unfamiliar height. "He's still in one of our bodies," he points out. "We should make sure he's okay."

No one has an answer to that. Lu Han shrugs and rolls over on the sofa again and Yifan slouches in his chair, staring at his hands, so Minseok wanders back into the kitchen to investigate. He finds the current resident of Junmyeon's body standing next to the counter with a mug in his hands, standing perfectly still and staring at the empty coffee machine. He looks up at Minseok's approach, but still doesn't say anything.

"We're all out," says Minseok unnecessarily. Not-Junmyeon nods silently, still holding the mug. "I mean, we're out of everything," Minseok continues. "There's no food in the house."

The other man's eyes flicker around at the cabinets. Minseok isn't sure, but he thinks he looks disappointed. If he is, he doesn't show it in any other way. He turns away from the coffee machine and fills the mug with water from the sink, leaning against the counter to drink it like he's forgotten about Minseok's presence. It should probably be insulting that this rival gang member doesn't even rate Minseok as enough of a danger to keep an eye on, but honestly it only feels relaxing. It's as if an unspoken truce exists here in the empty kitchen, a no man's land extending at least as far as the tile floor stretches. Minseok hears more people coming downstairs, hears more voices conversing out in the living room, but here he just watches the clock tick next to the sink. Somewhere in his periphery he sees "Junmyeon" take a step forward to look out the window, still drinking his mug of water. When he's finished, he reaches out a hand to place it on the counter without looking away from the window, but he miscalculates the distance. The mug doesn't make it to the counter before his fingers loosen. Instead it turns over a few times in midair before it hits the floor and shatters into pieces around his bare feet with a crash. Neither of them move. "Junmyeon" looks back and forth between his outstretched hand and the broken mug, like he's trying to figure out how that happened. There's a break in the voices outside just before Yixing's face appears in the doorway.

"What's going on?" he starts to ask, then notices the broken shards on the floor. "Oh no, that looks... and of course, you're not wearing shoes. No, don't try to clean it up, you'll only cut yourself. Hold still, I know there's a vacuum somewhere around here. Just don't move, either of you."

He looks sternly at both of them in turn, then disappears into one of the other rooms where Minseok can hear him rummaging around in search of the vacuum cleaner. The reaction is very much Junmyeon, even if their leader is walking around in Yixing's body. When he comes back, Minseok watches Junmyeon's body and his mind split between two different people and it's like he's seeing double because the one who looks like Junmyeon definitely doesn't _feel_ like him and the one who looks like Yixing moves and speaks just like Junmyeon. Not-Junmyeon still hasn't said anything and he hasn't met Minseok's eyes either. If he were to jump to conclusions, Minseok would think that he's embarrassed about the situation, but his face is so still that it's hard to tell. As soon as Junmyeon, in Yixing's body, gives him the go-ahead, he immediately slips past Minseok without a word. Junmyeon finishes wrapping the cord back up, shrugging at Minseok.

"Did he look upset to you?" he asks. "It was just a mug."

"I think it was more that he forgot he was a different size," says Minseok thoughtfully. "I don't think he even thought about it before it was too late to catch it. It's frustrating."

"It's weird," says Junmyeon fervently, looking at the doorway as if he can still see his own retreating back in it.

"You're telling me," Minseok agrees.

 

By the time Kyungsoo returns, his arms full of grocery bags, everyone is awake and most of them are gathered in the living room after having inspected the kitchen for themselves. Kyungsoo's delivery is greeted with great enthusiasm which, combined with the fact that several people point out that he didn't have any car keys, seems to improve his earlier foul mood.

"Good to know that whenever we're stranded somewhere without vital supplies, we can at least count on Kyungsoo to hotwire a car and save us from our own incompetence," Lu Han tells Minseok, cheerful once again with food in his stomach.

While the animosity isn't as thick as it was the night before, they still all go their separate ways after the first wave of food production. "Hongbin" and "Sanghyuk" head back down to the basement under Kyungsoo's watchful eye, most of the others retreat back into their rooms or explore the house further, and Minseok uses the opportunity to take the path down to the lake that he'd spotted earlier. Lu Han, predictably, tags along and they're joined at the last minute by Jongin. While Minseok has no objection to his presence under normal circumstances, right now it gives him a slight headache since Jongin is currently in Lu Han's body. It's disconcerting to hear Lu Han's speech patterns coming from one side and to turn the wrong way to where Lu Han's body is busy kicking a log off the path. It's eerily reminiscent of this morning's interactions with "Junmyeon." He avoids thinking about it too deeply by kicking Jongin off the pier as soon as they arrive and laughing at his startled yelp. When he turns around, Lu Han is doubled over laughing himself sick in that exaggerated way of his.

"Stop unhinging my jaw," Minseok cringes. "It's gross enough when it's on your face, but at least you always look weird." When Lu Han shows no signs of stopping, Minseok kicks him into the lake too.

"It's not my body! I can't feel it!" Lu Han yells through chattering teeth when he surfaces again.

"Trust me, you're feeling it," says Jongin when he hauls himself back onto the warm wooden boards. "That water is _freezing_. How would you like it if I pushed you in?" He shakes Lu Han's hair out of his eyes.

"Minseok doesn't feel cold," says Lu Han, treading water. "He laid down in a snowbank in his underwear once because I bet him he couldn't do it."

"That was before you showed up," Minseok tells a disbelieving Jongin. "I like warm better though." 

He flops down backwards, spreading out in the sun next to Jongin and ignoring Lu Han's tugs on his ankle. Lu Han spends a long time trying to convince Minseok that the water isn't really that bad once you get used to it, which is impossible to believe when he's slowly turning blue and shivering. When that fails, he starts begging Jongin to join him, but since Jongin has already felt how cold the water is, his pleas fall on deaf ears, so he settles for swimming to the edge and climbing back up onto the pier so he can drip on them both. Even that gets less of a reaction than he'd probably hoped for. Jongin makes a quiet grumbling noise and Minseok just waves him out of the way of the sunbeam he's lying in. As expected, Lu Han gives up after a while. He hangs his clothes on the  wooden railing to dry and takes a spot next to Minseok's head.

"At least your shirt will probably smell better now," he says. Minseok just snorts. "And you say I never do laundry."

"I don't think falling in a lake counts as laundry," Minseok says.

"You don't think that foam is soap?" Lu Han asks. He laughs when Minseok wrinkles his nose. "I'm kidding, it's not actually that gross. Should still probably wash the clothes, though."

Minseok doesn't say anything. Lu Han slumps across Jongin's stomach, using him as a pillow, and Minseok hears a faint 'oof', but Jongin remains, to all outside appearances, dead to the world.

"I think he fell asleep," remarks Lu Han. He looks closely at his face. "I look cute when I sleep," he decides finally.

"If you do, it's the only time you look cute," Minseok says, and smirks when Lu Han smacks his arm.

Lu Han rests his chin on Jongin's shirt, and it's lucky that Jongin can sleep through just about anything because the patterns Lu Han is tracing on the inside of his elbow would drive Minseok mad. "I'd like to go back to being cute," says Lu Han quietly after several minutes. 

Minseok looks for the right thing to say. "Are you saying I'm not cute?" he demands. Lu Han laughs and pours ice water on his neck.

 

When the sun just starts to touch the treetops, they stand up, cracking all their joints and poking Jongin with their toes to wake him up. Jongin, having fallen solidly asleep, has angry sunburn on one half of his body, which Lu Han finds hilarious up until the moment Minseok reminds him that it's _his_ body that's sunburned. Lu Han spends the walk back up to the house complaining about uneven tan lines while Jongin pokes at the red skin sadly. When they get close to the back door, Minseok can see Kyungsoo draping huge white sheets over every available surface. The porch, which wraps from the front of the building all the way around the side, is already covered in cloth, and Kyungsoo has moved on to the stair railings and lantern hooks. As they approach, Minseok sees someone back out of the doorway, his arms occupied with another basket of sheets. It turns out to be whoever is currently in Sanghyuk's body, and Kyungsoo takes the basket from him with a far less dirty look than he's given most of the others so far. The sight is one that Minseok never expected to see in his life: Baekhyun moving with Kyungsoo's quick, purposeful movements, and working with someone who looks like a member of their most troublesome rival gang. Kyungsoo's own body can be found in the kitchen, pouring a bowl of the cereal the real Kyungsoo had bought that morning and looking unsettled.

"I came upstairs and walked into Sanghyuk voluntarily cleaning," he says, around a mouthful of more fake marshmallows than Minseok would ever consider eating at this hour of the day. "I think I'm scarred for life."

"Trust me, it's just as weird seeing Baekhyun clean," Jongin mutters. Not-Kyungsoo looks at him, opens his mouth like he's going to say something, but then thinks better of it and spoons more cereal into his mouth instead, staring at Jongin's odd sunburn instead. 

Lu Han wanders over to the toaster to examine his reflection the way Yifan had that morning. "You, know," he says. "The more I think about it, the more I think I got the better end of the deal here. You have really nice skin, you know."

"Stop poking at my face," says Minseok, just quietly enough that "Kyungsoo" can't hear. "You're being weird."

"I'm appreciating your excellent skin," Lu Han insists. "Look, all it's done is get a little golden. It's _sunkissed_." He makes little jazz hands around the word.

"It's not," Minseok says firmly. "Stop stroking my face. It's weird enough when you do it normally. You look actually demented feeling yourself up in my body."

"'Stop appreciating my gorgeous features, Lu Han,'" imitates Lu Han. "'I resent compliments about my physical appearance.' Anyway, I'm not feeling myself up. Feeling myself up would be if I grabbed my butt like this." He illustrates, and then stops. "Oh wow, that's really weird." He flexes his fingers. "I know I've said this before, but like. Now I can say with absolute certainty that you have a really excellent butt."

"Stop it!" Minseok goes to punch him, but can't bring himself to land a blow on his own body. He almost thinks he would end up feeling it anyway. 

Lu Han gives him a disbelieving look. "You are the only person I know of who actively hates being appreciated."

"That's not appreciating," says Minseok. "That's groping. And seriously, stop it."

"Okay, okay," Lu Han holds up his hands. "But did you know I can actually _feel_ your thigh muscles move when I walk? Out of curiosity, how many squats can you do?"

"No, that's it," Minseok shakes his head, backing away. "This conversation is too weird. Stop talking about my legs, stop poking my butt, stop... doing _Lu Han things_ while you're in my body."

"Should I do Minseok things instead?" Lu Han calls after him. "I can make some coffee!"

Minseok steadfastly ignores him. He doesn't want to encourage Lu Han's twisted sense of humor. When he leaves the kitchen, he bumps into "Hongbin" next who is retreating out from the living room where Lu Han had had his hungry fit of despair that morning.

"Oh, sorry, I-" "Hongbin" starts but then breaks off, confused. "Sorry, I don't know who you- Anyway, someone who looks like Jaehwan is in there and I think he's trying to try out magic tricks on whoever he can corner. He's really bad at it too. So not all that different from Jaehwan, actually."

"I'll be careful," Minseok tells him.

Sure enough, he's confronted right away with a grin and a deck of cards as soon as he steps through the door.

"Hey, pick a card," "Jaehwan" nudges him. "Any card."

"An iTunes card," says Minseok and "Jaehwan" frowns.

"You don't have to be like that," he says with a pout. "I'm just trying to do a trick."

"It's up your sleeve," Minseok says. "I can _see_ it. You're really terrible at this. That's not even how you do that trick."

"You don't even know what trick I was going to do," says "Jaehwan" archly. "I just asked you to pick a card. Who knows what I was going to do next?"

"Something ridiculous probably," says Minseok. "Sorry, I'm not-" 

He would explain that he's not interested, but just then Lu Han pushes into the room, clearly in pursuit of Minseok. His eyes, or more properly _Minseok's_ eyes, light up when he sees what's going on. "Oh, magic tricks!" He rubs his hands together gleefully. "I love magic tricks."

Minseok uses this opportunity to escape. "Jaehwan" calls out from behind him as he crosses into the hallway.

"Junmyeon is going to call a meeting later," he says. "I think the guys downstairs want to announce something."

Minseok stops. "How do you know which one is Junmyeon?" he asks.

"Jaehwan's" eyes go very wide. "Who's Junmyeon?" he asks. He turns to Lu Han, suddenly looking innocently confused. "Who are you?"

Minseok sighs. "Never mind." Behind him he can hear "Jaehwan" asking 'who am I?' in that same tone of voice. When he reaches the top of the stairs, he encounters "Chanyeol" hurrying the other direction with a balled-up sheet clutched to his ear.

"Don't go up in the attic!" he warns Minseok, looking shaken. "There's a huge bird up there and it attacked me when I opened the trapdoor!" 

And then he's gone again, taking the stairs two at a time. Minseok thinks he can hear Yixing's voice as somewhere down below Junmyeon starts scolding him. That's fine, he thinks. A giant angry bird is exactly what he needs to occupy his time. It sounds like whatever landed on Lu Han last night has now taken up residence in the attic. Minseok takes a side trip into Lu Han's room to grab the board he'd pulled off his own window earlier, tearing off a strip of one of the sheets to wrap around the end to protect his hands, and then he sets off down the hallway to find the trapdoor. It turns out to be in the closet of the last door on the left, which Minseok assumes must be "Chanyeol's". He's ready to fend off any number of killer birds when he climbs the ladder, but the attic proves to be completely empty. There's a window at each end of the slanted roof, one of which is smashed and where the bird must have gotten in and out. Underneath it Minseok finds a single brown feather. A quick inspection of the place turns up a lot of owl pellets, meaning the creature has been living up here for a while, but he doesn't find any other sign of the owl itself. By the time he finishes, the sun has almost completely set, leaving the room lit with a dim golden glow from the westernmost window. Minseok drops the makeshift club down the trapdoor before following it. At least he can tell Lu Han that someone else has been terrorized by his death bird now, so it looks like Lu Han wasn't the only one to be freaked out by it.

The news will have to wait, however, because when Minseok goes downstairs again, Junmyeon has already called a housewide meeting. Every seat in the living room is occupied, with those who weren't quick enough to get a chair lining the walls. Minseok finds a spot on the arm of the sofa, right next to "Jongin" (which would be Zitao, if his hunch is correct). Junmyeon is standing in the center of the room, and now that he sees everyone assembled, he clears his throat.

"We've spent the day going through the materials we took from the warehouse and that... got us mixed up like this," he says, "and we've come to some conclusions."

"Who is 'we'?" Sehun asks. He's leaning against Kyungsoo, and Yifan's body is about as much bigger than Baekhyun's as Sehun's is bigger than Kyungsoo's, so it takes Minseok a minute to figure out what's different.

"'We' is me, uh..." Junmyeon stops for a moment, remembering that for the most part everyone is still in the dark as to the others' identities. "... It's me, Baekhyun over there-" he points to Kyungsoo "-and those two." He points to "Hongbin" and "Sanghyuk", who are sharing one armchair. "As I said, we spent most of the day looking through the boxes we brought here and examining the documentation we could find."

"Sanghyuk" takes this moment to speak up. "There wasn't a lot to it," he says. "I'm afraid some, if not most, of the research paperwork was left in some of the boxes we left behind, if it was even in the warehouse to begin with. What we did find was enough to tell us some things about the crates and their contents, though."

"We knew going in that it was some kind of biomedical research," says Yifan, "and we know now that whatever the stuff is is some kind of gas."

"Yeah, a gas that switches people's bodies around," mutters Zitao next to Minseok's ear.

"Right, we already knew that much," "Sanghyuk" agrees. "Even without the detailed experiment notes or anything that would explain _why_ anyone would need this kind of chemical, there's enough of the technical information in each of the boxes to figure out the chemical composition and many of its properties." He gives a sort of half-smile, looking down at his lap. "If I could get my hands on the full notes, I could spend days doing nothing but studying this material."

Next to him, "Hongbin" looks fondly exasperated before taking up the speech himself. "Basically what we found is that, yeah, it throws you out of your body and into someone else's when you breathe it. But that's pretty obvious and it's not actually the bad news." He looks around at the assembled group, now all completely focused on him, and takes a deep breath before going on. "The bad news is that, as far as H- er, as far as we can tell, the longer we stay like this, the harder it will be to get us back to normal."

The room goes quiet while they all digest this news. Minseok feels the dread building in his chest and clawing at his throat now. While up until now he'd found the situation annoying and uncomfortable, the thought that there's a clock ticking down to the moment when this could become potentially irreversible makes him feel sick to his stomach. Judging from the looks on everyone's faces, they feel largely the same way.

"So," says Yifan slowly, "we need to figure out how to reverse this. And we need to do it fast." He looks up at Junmyeon. "Right?"

Junmyeon shrugs helplessly. "If we don't, we might be stuck like this forever," he sighs. Yifan's mouth tightens.

"Kyungsoo" nods once, sharply. "If that's the case," he says, "then we'll all need to work together." He looks around, meeting several glares defiantly. "I know we don't trust each other, but if we refuse to work with each other, we can kiss any chance of getting our bodies back goodbye. And if that happens, both of our groups will fall apart. We operate as a team, the same way you do, and either we set aside our fight and work as _one_ team now or we never work with our teams again. It's not what we want to hear, but that's all there is to it."

Minseok has to agree, though he has his doubts about their ability to interact calmly. Then again, calm cooperation has never been guaranteed even within EXO, so it's hardly the first time they've had to overcome clashing tempers and old dislikes to accomplish a goal. Minseok only notices Lu Han next to him when he hears -- or rather, feels -- a whisper right in his ear that makes him jump.

"What?" he whispers back, trying to calm his racing heart.

"I said what do you think?" Lu Han nods towards the middle of the room where "Kyungsoo" is discussing their next move with Junmyeon. "About him?"

Minseok considers this. "Hakyeon?" he suggests. "He's definitely VIXX and he sounds like he's used to speaking for his gang."

Lu Han nods with a satisfied smile. "That's what I was thinking too. Nice to know we're on the same page." He cracks his neck, rolling his shoulders forward. "At this rate we'll have them all figured out by dinnertime tomorrow."

"Doesn't do us a whole lot of good if we're the only ones who know because they won't trust each other enough to put their cards on the table," Minseok shoots back.

"It's something at least," Lu Han shrugs. "Do you think we''ll be done soon? I'm hungry again."

"This group?" Minseok looks around. "Not likely." Junmyeon has his arms crossed, standing in front of "Jaehwan" who is slouched in his chair wearing a pair of glasses with wide, obviously fake, eyes painted on them. In the seat next to him, "Taekwoon" is audibly giggling. "Hongbin" and "Sanghyuk" are staring in open horror. 

"You may have a point," Lu Han concedes. He stands up, which interrupts Junmyeon's mostly ineffective lecture. Very few people were paying attention anyway, least of all "Jaehwan", at whom it was aimed to begin with.  "I'm declaring _myself_ done this this meeting," he declares. "Anyone who cares to join my rebellion is welcome. I guarantee you chicken in every pot and a car in every garage, once the revolution comes!"

"Can you guarantee me a one way trip out of this body?" Kyungsoo says, deadpan, but he stands up from his seat anyway. No one is paying any attention to Junmyeon at this point, so he throws up his hands in defeat. Lu Han slings an arm over Kyungsoo's shoulders. "If that is what you desire, my friend," he says, "and if that is what will get me into a position of power that I will not at all abuse, then yes. I will guarantee that."

"And like any good politician, he'll conveniently forget about that promise as soon as he gets what he wants," says Minseok.

Kyungsoo's expression clearly says 'I would kill him in his sleep', but Lu Han waves a hand. "Would that really be so bad?"

"Yes," say Kyungsoo and Minseok immediately, which Lu Han also ignores.

"I mean, I could get used to this," Lu Han continues. "Granted, this way I don't have my alluring doe eyes to bat through my luscious eyelashes to get what I want, but that's hardly seemed to hold Minseok back before." He smiles winningly when Minseok glares at him. "I mean, who can be mad at this face?"

"It's _my_ face," Minseok says under his breath, though no one is really in danger of overhearing. "It's not gonna work on me."

"That's because you're special, dear," says Lu Han kindly. "It works on literally everyone else. Watch." He sidles up to Yifan. " _Duizhang_ ~" he practically purrs. "Would you, out of sheer friendship and love, go get me a cup of coffee?"

Yifan looks taken aback, while across the room Hakyeon looks concerned at the almost predatory look his body is being subjected to.

"I... guess so?" Yifan ventures, and his retreat into the kitchen seems almost more out of desire to escape Lu Han than to do him a favor.

"See?" Lu Han says smugly.

"That was the most disturbing thing I've ever seen," Minseok tells him. "Don't ever do that again."

"You're right," Lu Han says. "Yifan is a bit of a pushover. I can understand why you're not convinced. I should try someone a little bit harder to persuade."

"Lu Han-" Minseok tries to sound stern rather than panicked, which is a losing battle.

Several people have left the room after Yifan, presumably in search of food, though Minseok thought he saw "Junmyeon" heading back towards the bedroom on his own. All this means is that Lu Han's next target is Zitao, who is currently occupied trying to catch Sehun's attention without getting up off the sofa. Sehun is in the middle of a conversation with Jongin and "Wonshik" where they're in the middle of laughing at Jongin's terrible sunburn. Zitao pouts at being ignored, looking even grumpier when Lu Han drops into the seat next to him.

"Taozi," Lu Han starts, which gets him a suspicious look.

"Who says I'm him?" Zitao demands.

"You're not very subtle, my little peach fuzz," says Lu Han. Zitao's jaw clenches. "Anyway, how would you feel about helping your favorite hyung scrounge up some food?"

"You sound very confident you're my favorite hyung," says Zitao coldly.

"Of course I am," says Lu Han. "Look at me. Everyone loves this face. Strangers on the street love this face. This face is a national treasure. You cannot tell me you do not love this face."

Zitao crosses his arms across his chest and slumps further. "Maybe not, but who says I love the person wearing it right now."

"Taozi, you wound me to the quick," says Lu Han, but he's still smiling. It's starting to put Minseok on edge. "But I distinctly heard you say you love this face, didn't I?" He looks at the people sitting nearest for backup, which happens to be "Taekwoon" and "Jaehwan", both of whom nod in agreement. "See? They heard me. I should take a poll."

"Lu Han, no," Minseok hisses, trying to shut him up by drilling a hole through his skull with nothing but the power of his glare. "Stop it."

"A show of hands, everyone!" Lu Han calls out over Minseok's protests. "Who here wishes they were in my place right now? We all know I won the body lottery!"

Minseok would throttle him if he could. There's really nothing he wants so much right now as to choke Lu Han until he stops being so fucking embarrassing, but all he can do is clench his fists until he can feel his fingernails digging into his palms, his face heating up. He thinks several people raise their hands, and off in the corner "Taekwoon" and "Jaehwan" are giggling again and even Zitao might be smiling and Minseok needs to leave right now before he ends up killing his own body in a fit of aggressive mortification. He holds his breath and counts to ten, his voice in his head sounding a lot more calm than the door turning on its hinges at something near the speed of sound.

Minseok finds himself seeking out Junmyeon's room without even thinking, ignoring the surprised eyes that look up from a book in favor of throwing himself on the bed with a shriek that's mostly muffled by the pillows. The impact is more satisfying when coming from Sehun's height and Minseok thinks that maybe this is why the maknaes have so many loud emotional outbursts. It's because they're all so tall.

"He's driving me insane!" Minseok fumes through a mouth full of blanket. "He's only doing it because I told him not to! He makes faces at himself in the mirror with _my face_ and talks to himself and says stupid things in _my voice_ and he does it because he knows it pisses me off! He's going around and asking how many people wish they had ended up in my body instead. It's bad enough even having him in there and I know him better than almost anyone else and- _argh_!" He punches a pillow, unable to articulate his thoughts further.

It's the silence that nudges him out of autopilot. The situation should have smacked him in the face the instant he started complaining in Sehun's voice, but it's almost funny the way having a Junmyeon who doesn't fuss is more of a reality check than a whole new set of vocal cords. Minseok pushes himself up until his face is no longer buried.

"Sorry," he mumbles, eyes still on the now-creased sheets. "You look like- ... he has this kind of open-door policy and I got used to bursting in to vent whenever I felt like it and I guess I followed you without thinking." It's true that Junmyeon encourages everyone in their group to come to him with their problems, but most of the others seem to feel that this is below their dignity as gangsters, so as far as Minseok knows only he, Yifan, and occasionally Zitao take advantage of his listening ear.

"Junmyeon" only shrugs in response to his outburst though, turning back to his book as if to indicate that Minseok's rant hadn't done more than initially startle him. Minseok should leave. He doesn't even know who this person is, and if he's not even on a _real_ name basis with him, let alone a first name basis, then he definitely should not be using him as a sounding board for all the gripes he has with his own teammates. Minseok doesn't leave. The sound of the pages turning is soothing, as is the presence of another person, even if they don't talk. Or maybe _because_ they don't talk. When there's no communication, there's no pressure for Minseok to pretend to be Sehun or to worry about who knows who he really is or who even cares enough to wonder who he is. When "Junmyeon" actually speaks, Minseok tenses up at the sound before he realizes what is being said.

"If someone is being tiresome," not-Junmyeon is saying, "you can always stare at them until they stop. Words often encourage them, but... I've found that simply staring can be enough to discomfit them."

Minseok tries not to look visibly surprised, but he's caught off-balance. Is an unknown member of their rival gang not only listening to his complaints but giving him actual _advice_? The idea seems absurd.

"What?" he says.

"Junmyeon" huffs quietly. "It was just a suggestion," he says, staring intently at one spot on the page.

Minseok shakes his head. "Sorry, I just... I wasn't expecting you to be actually listening."

"Well, you were quite loud when you kicked my door open," points out "Junmyeon" dryly. "Again." 

Minseok has to laugh. "I'll try not to make a habit of it, I guess," he says, and "Junmyeon" shrugs. 

Minseok's stomach surprises them both by growling, and Minseok remembers that he left the room all in a snit before getting anything to eat. "Junmyeon" surprises him even more a second later by reaching down beside his chair to pull out a bag of what turns out to be pretzels, which he tosses over to Minseok without a word. As Minseok crunches the snacks, he wonders exactly what kind of relationship this is turning out to be, where they seem to share food and advice freely, but guard their names like state secrets.

 

The very next day, Minseok finds himself in the back of one of the vans with "Junmyeon", as well as "Chanyeol" and Jongdae, who pulls back onto the main road, retracing the route they'd taken to get to the lake house in the first place. They're on their way back to the shipyard where they'd stolen the canisters of gas to see what information they can gather about the chemicals' manufacturer. It's almost certainly too soon to go back to an area where they'd stolen such valuable and high-profile goods, but the general consensus was that danger of being trapped in each other's bodies outweighs any danger of being identified as the culprits and arrested. 

"We'll have to get cleaned up first," Jongdae is saying, "and since none of us can go back to HQ, that means buying laundry. They'll be expecting us to look pulled-together too. We have a reputation, you know. So we'll have to be really lucky to get suits off the rack that fit anywhere near properly, but I don't know if I can get to a tailor that'll be able to handle this much of a rush job."

"You want to get four suits tailored in an afternoon?" "Chanyeol" scoffs. "I mean I suspected you were crazy, but now I know it for a fact."

Jongdae is about to say something but Minseok cuts him off. "You're fussing, Jongdae. He's right, we don't have time. We have to get whatever information we can find back to the others as soon as possible."

Jongdae's face in the rearview mirror looks unsatisfied with the idea, but he turns his attention to "Junmyeon" instead. "You're our leader while we're in there, right?" he says. "They'll be expecting Junmyeon to be in charge, so like it or not, you're stuck with the job. Do you have a plan for how we're going to convince them to give up the manufacturer's identity and the name of someone we can talk around to our side?"

Not-Junmyeon just stares back at him. Jongdae makes a frustrated noise.

"I can point out the guy on our payroll to you," he says, "but he's going to expect you to take control of the conversation, so you better know what you're going to say to him. We can't threaten to shoot him in the middle of a crime scene. It'll draw too much attention and he'll know we're not going to go through with it with that many cops in the area. It's going to be hard enough to get in there to talk to anyone without appearing openly violent." 

"Chanyeol" nudges "Junmyeon" with a foot, giving him an inquiring look, but "Junmyeon" gives his head a barely-visible shake, eyes still fixed on the rearview mirror. When he still fails to get a response, Jongdae throws back his head against the headrest, giving the steering wheel a particularly vicious twist and merging between two eighteen-wheelers without even slowing. 

"Fine!" he says. "Fine, you just stand there and look angry and I'll do all the talking. I'm sure I can come up with something. You just better look scary as fuck, or I swear to god this is going to go to shit."

"Not a problem," snorts "Chanyeol". "Junmyeon's" mouth quirks so slightly that Minseok wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't been looking for it.

The suits don't fit nearly as badly as Jongdae had feared, and Jongdae has to admit that the pair of expensive sunglasses "Junmyeon" picks out make him look even more intimidating than before. Combined with the posture he adopts as soon as he steps out of the dressing room, "Junmyeon" looks more threatening than Minseok thinks their leader has ever looked in his life. Minseok tries to remember the same man curled up in an armchair with a book munching pretzels the night before, and the two images are hard to reconcile in his head. When he puts on this new personality as easily as he put on the suit, it becomes much easier to remember that "Junmyeon" is a criminal, and one usually working against Minseok and his group. For the first time since the day's plan had been explained to them, Minseok thinks they might really have a chance at pulling this off.

If "Junmyeon's" stony stare and rigidly crossed arms are enough to make Minseok feel skittish, they certainly do wonders on the poor shipyard supervisor who they'd bribed to engineer the relaxed security on the shipment. He stutters and prattles, and when Jongdae lays down their demands in a voice like ice he gladly hands over the information they want.

"I don't know what you want with them," he says, sweating slightly, "but they've been really testy with everyone who tries to contact them ever since- well. For the last day or two at least. I mean, I know this guy here and if anyone in the company can get you whatever else you want, it's him. For the right price, that is."

When they walk out of the shipyard gates towards the van, names and contact details securely tucked into "Junmyeon's" breast pocket, "Chanyeol" has to stifle a whoop and even Jongdae looks pleased. When Minseok looks over at Junmyeon, all he can see is Sehun's face and his own grin reflected in the sunglasses.

This is only the first step of their plan though, as the real Junmyeon is emphatic about reminding him when they get back to the house. They've been given the name of an employee whom their shipyard contact assures them is quite amenable to the idea of selling company secrets, so the next step is to actually get in contact with this employee and somehow get as much information as they can about the gas and any possible way to reverse its effects. If they can actually get their hands on a physical "cure", then so much the better, but if not then Junmyeon will pull in every spare bit of cash he can get his hands on to "make them an offer they can't refuse." The only problem is, once again, their contact will be expecting to meet with EXO's leaders. When the VIXX members protest this (to no one's surprise), Yifan calmly points out that the information was given to them by an EXO contact and any sign of the two groups working together is bound to arouse suspicion. And suspicion is the one thing they cannot afford to attract more of right now. This means that, given the distribution of bodies at the moment, the candidates for the meeting are down to "Junmyeon", who seems uninclined to engage in verbal negotiations, and Sehun, who is complete shit at it. 

"You can't just go saying whatever pops into your head," Junmyeon stresses. "You have to think about what they want to hear and then try to phrase your arguments so it sounds like you're giving them that when you're really getting what you want."

"This sounds worse than chess," Sehun groans. "Do I really have to do this?"

"You were complaining just this morning about Yifan's hangnails," Jongdae points out. "So yes. Yes, you have to do it."

Meanwhile, "Junmyeon" retreats back to his room, where only Minseok follows him. Once again, "Junmyeon" settles into the armchair near the window while Minseok settles onto the bed. The previous night's comfortable silence covers them again, but Minseok knows he'll have to be the one to break it this time.

"Not that I want to put more pressure on you," he says, "but... everyone is pretty desperate to get their bodies back." He gets a glare for that. "Okay, so that wasn't exactly 'no pressure' but do you get what I mean?" He sighs and flops backwards onto the bed. "It's just that. Looking impressive and glaring worked today, but I don't think it'll work again. Not this time. We have to convince one of this company's employees to sell even more top secret research materials to people who stole from them already."

He's mostly thinking out loud to himself at this point, but it still gets a reaction from not-Junmyeon: another annoyed huff that makes Minseok sit up to look at him. His eyebrows are furrowed and he stares at his hands in his lap.

"I am not good at talking," he says quietly. "And yet in this body it seems that that is all I can do."

"You don't need to say a lot," Minseok says. "You just need to think through what you say first. Sehun never thinks before he speaks and he goes ahead with whatever smart remark he happens to come up with and pisses off everyone. He comes up with great arguments but he's still a brat and he forgets. You just... need to keep his mouth from running away with him."

"Junmyeon" is no longer staring at his hands, instead looking at Minseok strangely. "Sehun..." he says softly, and Minseok realizes he had called their youngest by his real name without even thinking. Well, no way to take it back now. "Junmyeon" doesn't comment on it further. He nods a little, still looking at Minseok. "Keep his temper in check," he says. "I will... try."

It feels strange realizing that someone he was pointing a gun at not two days ago is now effectively promising to watch after Minseok's youngest teammate, but it also feels strange being in said teammate's body. Minseok is so far away from every benchmark of normalcy at this point that he might as well give up trying to make sense of any of it.

_Just a few more days,_ he tells himself. _Once they get through this mission and we get hold of the antidote, then everything can go back to the way it was._

He watches "Junmyeon" pull out a book, eyes downcast once again at the page, and tries not to think about coming face to face with those eyes in a few days, back in their proper body once again, on the wrong side of a gun barrel. He tries not to think about whether he'd be able to pull the trigger quite as fast as he would have before.

 

Jongdae makes the call and sets up the meeting, assuring their contact on the other end that their leaders will be arriving alone. Junmyeon begins to roam the house with lists of supplies they'll need, cornering anyone he encounters and sending them off on an endless series of errands. Minseok doesn't know how it's even possible but Hakyeon, in Kyungsoo's body, seems to fuss just as much. With Junmyeon taking care of most of the physical supplies, he keeps Sehun and not-Junmyeon captive, going over possible strategies and drilling them non-stop on their negotiation tactics. Whenever Hakyeon's attention is on Sehun, not-Junmyeon slips away with an ease that suggests years of practice, retreating instead back to the bedroom where Minseok is usually waiting. If Minseok is not there, "Junmyeon" opens the connecting door and takes up residence in one of that room's chairs while he waits for Minseok's return. (The chair wedged under the door has long since been moved back to its original spot.) They spend far less time in actual discussion than they do simply sitting on opposite sides of the room, each engaged in his own preparations. If they speak, it's to answer any questions "Junmyeon" has about how to keep Sehun mindful of the mission without drawing attention to the fact. As the hour of the meeting draws closer, they don't manage to settle on any set negotiation plan despite Hakyeon's best efforts, but Minseok feels marginally confident that "Junmyeon" will be able to keep everything running smoothly no matter what tactic Sehun takes. After that, the only thing that remains is to get the two of them suited up and supplied for the meeting itself.

"If they are at all competent, they'll take away any weapons you have on you," says Kyungsoo, handing them each a small pistol before bending to attach a small knife to the underside of Sehun's belt. "But at the same time, if you go in there completely unarmed they're bound to get suspicious. The trick will be to let them find enough to satisfy them while leaving something hidden in case of emergencies."

"Do you expect... emergencies?" Sehun swallows. 

It looks like it's on the tip of Kyungsoo's tongue to say that he always expects emergencies, but Junmyeon steps in. "No," he says, "but it never hurts to be prepared. You'll both be wearing this to help us walk you through any difficulties." He holds up what looks like two wristwatches and two of the world's smallest earpieces. Minseok recognizes it as one of Chanyeol's devices.

"Because wearing a wire is _not at all_ how people get shot in movies," says Sehun dolefully.

"Well, it's a good thing you're not in a movie then," says Kyungsoo, tucking another knife into the inside of "Junmyeon's" shoe. "Don't get shot."

"You're so helpful," Sehun curls his lip. He looks over to where Jongin and Zitao are standing. Zitao is gnawing his lip nervously. "I'm not going to get shot!"

Minseok helps "Junmyeon" fit the earpiece into place without dropping it. It's small enough to go unnoticed, but that means it's also easy to lose, and when it's the only way they'll be able to keep tabs on their two members they cannot afford to lose the tiny microphone and transmitter. When he leans down to attach the tiny wires, Minseok can feel the tension in "Junmyeon's" shoulders.

"Don't worry about doing too much negotiation," he says quietly. "Just keep the conversation off of the dangerous topics. Sehun can handle the persuasion part."

"Junmyeon" nods jerkily. Minseok watches him and Sehun climb into the van where Jongdae has it pulled up to the front door, and Minseok doesn't know how anyone could mistake the two for the leaders, no matter what they may look like right now, but it will have to be enough to fool their contact.

Junmyeon and Yifan seat themselves at the kitchen table with the other transmitter and all the receiving equipment while several of the others work to set up a makeshift base of operations around them. Those with nothing to do stand around the edges of the room to watch. No one breaks off to find other entertainment. The thought would never even occur to any of them at this moment. The speakers crackle to life and Sehun confirms that they are approaching the company's public lobby, where they are scheduled to meet the lab assistant and "relocate to a secure location." The phrasing makes Minseok wary, but they are simply not in a position to refuse. Any concession they can make in the hopes of winning over someone with inside access is one they _have_ to make and they cannot hold out on any but the most vital terms.

When Jongdae confirms in a quiet undertone that Sehun and "Junmyeon" have left the lobby, Junmyeon tells him to stay there and wait for them to return. Minseok looks over at Lu Han, but his friend is staring with single-minded intensity at the transmitting equipment as if it will suddenly sprout a screen and show him where the other two are at this moment. Yifan is shuffling the papers with the information they _do_ have already, consulting with "Sanghyuk" on several passages and marking through lines with a highlighter that one of them unearthed. They can hear the sound of footsteps coming through the speakers, along with inane chatter from the lab assistant which is fielded mostly by Sehun. As expected, they are relieved of their pistols and several other small weapons by some bodyguards, and Minseok can almost see Sehun's apologetic shrug as they all laugh it off. So far, so good.

The problems begin when the topic shifts from the strange incident at the shipyard to the gas canisters that went missing. The lab assistant has no qualms about describing the gas itself in technical detail, and "Sanghyuk" spends the entire time scribbling furious notes on the back of every available piece of paper, but it seems clear that technical information is all the assistant expects to be handing out. Sehun asks if there exists a way to reverse the effects of the chemical, which the assistant seems uninclined to answer outright, instead hemming and hawing about the theory behind such a reversal. Minseok can hear Sehun becoming more and more impatient with each evasive answer, no matter how gently "Junmyeon" steers him back into polite responses.

"But have you actually _made_ a chemical that can reverse the effects?" Sehun questions. "I would think it would be criminally irresponsible for your company to ship out a substance like this without any confirmed and readily available cure."

"And you would know all about "criminally irresponsible," wouldn't you?" says the assistant snidely. "I can assure you that my company is far more capable of taking care of... _accidents_... than you would think."

"Careful, Sehun," says Junmyeon. "That doesn't mean they have anything concrete."

"So you're prepared for any possible mishap?" Sehun asks. "Suppose one of the staff members working on the project dropped something and got a whiff of the stuff? You'd have to have something on hand to take care of that."

"Of course," the lab assistant admits. "The counterpart to the serum is not currently being made available to the wider research community, but we have steps that we take in case of an internal incident."

There is a collective inhale amongst everyone gathered in the kitchen. Minseok closes his eyes for one short moment, dizzy with relief. A way to reverse the switch exists. He doesn't let himself dwell on that for too long though, because they still have to get their hands on it for it to do any good.

Sehun has the same thought, because his voice is eager now. "So you do have it. I can tell you that my associates and I would be most interested in acquiring a substance like that."

"Why?" the lab assistant sounds wary now. "I've told you everything I know about the project. That's more than any other research facility has right now."

"Like I said," Sehun says, his voice carefully _not_ raised, "we're fascinated with your company's work and we would like to support you as much as we can in your further production, for a cut of the profits. We can provide you a substantial amount of backing up front, but we would like something a little more tangible to hold onto before we go forward."

"There's no way having this chemical would do you any good unless-" There's a silence. Minseok holds his breath. Junmyeon's knuckles are white on the microphone. The assistant's voice comes back low and full of certainty. "Unless you already had the counterpart."

"Shit," Yifan swears under his breath.

"Can we get them out of there?" Lu Han demands.

Yixing's usually lazy voice is tight when Junmyeon responds, shaking his head. "I can't think of a way."

Minseok's mind is racing and he chews the inside of Sehun's mouth as he listens to Sehun try to play down their involvement in the theft of the crates. The situation is getting worse with every second, and Sehun is simply unable to talk his way out of it. The voices are getting louder and louder, Sehun's getting angrier the more he  loses control of the situation, and Minseok knows they'll have to turn and make a break for it if they're to have any chance of getting away without all-out violence. Then through the speakers they hear the unmistakable sound of gunshots.

Hakyeon lets out a choked noise, knocking over one of the chairs in his haste to get near the microphone. "Get out of there! T-" He wrenches the entire thing out of Junmyeon's hand. "Can either of you hear me?"

"You're messing up the cords!" "Wonshik" grabs at the connection, holding the wires in one place. "Let go, or we'll lose sound completely!"

Minseok's mouth is dry. There's only static coming through the speakers now as "Wonshik" hurries to fix the connections. Someone's hand finds Minseok and he turns to find his own face looking scarily blank as Lu Han slowly laces their fingers together.

"It should be working now, but I'm not getting anything." Not-Wonshik gives the transmitter a good thump with the heel of his hand. "If there's a disruption on their end, I can't do anything."

No one wants to think about what a disruption on the other end could mean. The sounds of gunfire have stopped, but they can't hear the other two shouting either. At least when they were yelling, that meant they were...

Minseok shakes off Lu Han's hand, ignoring his hurt look when he pushes past him, back up the stairs, into his own room. He stands in the doorway connecting his room with the one next to it. The book is still lying facedown on the armchair next to the window. When Minseok looks up, he can see Sehun's face reflected in the big mirror over the dresser. He had always thought that "white as a sheet" was an expression, but the face he sees there is definitely paler than the sheets on the bed right now.

_I should wash those,_ he thinks, feeling slow and stupid. _That's barely white at all._

He doesn't wash them. Instead he sits down on the bed and wraps one of them around his hand over and over until it winds around his arm. Then he lies down in the pooled bedclothes and waits for his current body to feel the snapping of whatever connection it still has to its rightful owner.

Hours pass, or Minseok realizes that they must because the light changes in the room. He's not someone usually prone to moping and that's not what this feels like anyway. He just doesn't want to be around everyone else while they yell and run circles around each other trying to figure out what happened and generally dissolve in chaos. He doesn't want to deal with any of that, so he retreats back upstairs to where it's quiet. This is where he's used to finding refuge from whatever loud insanity is being perpetrated elsewhere in the house, so he settles in to take his mind off off everything. He picks up the book off the armchair, flipping around to random pages to see what's in it. From what he can tell, it's some sort of wilderness adventure novel where the main protagonist drops everything and runs away from home to go live halfway up a mountain for a year. It's the sort of thing Minseok would have read when he was a boy, he thinks, flipping through the yellowed pages. The desire to strike out on his own and scratch would have appealed to him and becoming a mountainside hermit, while it tends to get you labeled as strange and antisocial, is probably a more socially acceptable choice than turning to organized crime. Minseok wonders if it's too late to disappear into the woods now. At the moment it seems far preferable to going downstairs and listening to the static coming from the transmitter like everyone else in the vain hopes of contacting their missing friends. Even if they haven't formally acknowledged each other in any way, let alone voiced the sentiment of standing together on the same side, it feels right to include "Junmyeon" in the category. Minseok wishes he'd wheedled a name out of the other man before he left, since he finds it uncomfortable to keep mentally describing him in terms of who he is _not_. He is not their leader, but while most of them seem fixed on holding onto and juggling their identities with their current appearances, he was willing to set aside his own identity to assume a foreign leader's for the good of the mission. For all of their sakes. It could have been a selfish desire to get his own body back, but Minseok remembers the determination in "Junmyeon's" eyes as they rested on Sehun during their preparations, remembers the hours spent patiently spent trying to understand enough of Sehun's mind to work as an effortless team. It was far more dedication to the illusion than they technically needed. Minseok himself would personally avoid throwing himself that far into a cover simply since with familiarity comes attachment. Point in case, the familiar feeling of having that other presence in the room means that Minseok more keenly feels its absence now. Despite his best efforts to stay detached, not _all_ of the unsettled feeling in his stomach is on Sehun's behalf.

He has to set the book down when he hears the sound of the van returning, the wheels crunching on the gravel outside. Of course they'd have gotten in contact with Jongdae by now. Once it was clear that communication was cut between the two teams, it only made sense to cut their losses, to call back their operative to rally and regroup. It means that Minseok is even less inclined to return downstairs than before, though. He turns his back on the window, but freezes when he hears shouting from downstairs. The door bangs shut, followed by pounding footsteps, and then he hears Jongin's voice which means that Zitao is yelling. 

"Come _quick_!" he's shouting, down in the entrance hall. "Someone- guys, they're _here_!"

Minseok swings his legs off the bed before he knows what he's doing, the dizzy vertigo in his head only half because of the still-unfamiliar height. When he gets out into the hall, the shouting is louder now and it sounds like a crowd is congregating next to the front door. From the top of the stairs he can see Jongdae pushing through the doorway, trying to clear a path through the mass of people.

"Fuck, guys, give them some space!" he yells. He looks torn between grinning and staring back at the two figures behind him in concern. 

Hakyeon lets out an incoherent noise, elbowing Jongdae out of the way to grab "Junmyeon's" shoulders before latching onto him like he'll drift away again if he lets go. "Junmyeon", for his part, stands there with a resigned expression on his face. He pushes a little at Hakyeon's arms, but mostly just rolls his eyes.

They both look tired. That's what Minseok notices first. Then he sees the red staining Sehun's shirt and splashed up the side of "Junmyeon's" face and only the fact that they're still upright and walking under their own power keeps Minseok from being overcome with worry. The same cannot be said for Zitao, however.

"What did you _do_?" he demands, grabbing the sleeve of Sehun's shirt. "I told you not to get shot!"

"I didn't get shot!" Sehun protests. "It's not my blood! Mostly."

"What do you mean, 'mostly'?" Yifan says sternly, checking over his own body for damage. "What did you do?"

"Got out of there alive, is what I did," says Sehun. "Whose bright idea was it to give us knives as backup weapons? Because it meant that I had a bunch of big beefy guys trying to stab me with my own knife."

"If you'd kept hold of it, you wouldn't have had that problem," Kyungsoo says, but it doesn't sound as sharp as he might usually be.

"I thought I did pretty well, to be honest," says Sehun. " _Duizhang_ might even be able to fool people into thinking he's cool if he has a giant scar on his face."

"Haha," Yifan frowns. "You better not have gotten me scarred."

Minseok comes up next to him. In Sehun's body he's tall enough to see the cut running next to his eye and through his eyebrow, the bruise forming on his jaw. "Next time you don't answer our calls, you're grounded until you're thirty," he says. 

Sehun rolls his eyes. "Yes, Mom," he drawls. "Sorry I was at such a wild party that I forgot."

"What happened?" Junmyeon asks, as to-the-point as ever.

"Turns out watches are not all that secure in an all-out brawl," says Sehun. "But you mean in general? No one bothered to tell this guy that we wanted to get anything but theoretical research information so he freaked out when we asked him to sneak us out an actual product. Also I guess he figured out that we're the ones who snatched their last shipment and I guess their buyers were really pissed about it. Just how much is this stuff worth?"

"A lot," says Junmyeon vaguely.

"I heard a rumor going around that it was something in the area of billions," Hakyeon says mildly. "Why do you think we were so interested?"

Sehun's jaw goes slack and even Minseok is surprised. He knew it was their biggest heist yet, but he hadn't expected the figure to go quite that high. No wonder their lab contact hadn't been interested in helping them. He didn't know how much Junmyeon had pulled together to bribe him, but he was willing to bet it was nowhere near the amount that they'd already cost the guy's company.

"Anyway," Sehun was saying, "I guess he figured he could get more than we were offering him if he brought us to his bosses, because he had his thugs try to grab us. That's when we started to fight back."

"With knives against their guns?" Zitao still hasn't let go of his sleeve. "Exactly how were you expecting to not get shot?"

"I wasn't really," Sehun admits. "I was kinda expecting to get shot, really, but we lucked out. It wasn't really me who got us out of it though. It's not like I was useless," he hurries to add. "Like, all the blood you see here is me. Even if it's not, you know, _me_. But I guess I looked more threatening because most of them went for me to begin with and it's kind of heard to hold off three big guys with the pocketknives you gave us."

"Not really," Kyungsoo murmurs, "but continue."

"I broke one of their noses, I think, so that was enough time to get a knife in his throat-" the knuckles of Yifan's hand are bruised and cut when Sehun flexes them "-but then the other guy had a gun, so I was trying to get it away from him and that's when the third guy came up behind me. I guess, uh... _he_ had gotten one of our guns back from the scientist guy, so he shot him in the back of the head when he tried to choke me. Then I got the gun away and we got rid of the last thug and made a break for it. He's the one who found the way out too. We couldn't go out the front doors like this, but he found a fire escape and figured out where we'd parked the van. Then all we had to do was wait for Jongdae to show up and get us back here."

"Let this be a lesson to us never to send you on a negotiation mission again," Lu Han says.

"That's what I was trying to tell you all along!" Sehun flings up his arms, dislodging Zitao in the process. "I told from the start that I'm shit at this stuff!"

"It could have gone much worse," Junmyeon points out in a conciliatory tone. "At least we know that there _is_ a chemical that can reverse this, even if we don't have it in our hands yet."

"I got most of the technical specs and formulas while he was talking to you," says "Sanghyuk", "but the connection was fuzzy in parts. Would you mind looking over what I wrote to see if you can fill in any holes?"

"Sure," Sehun shrugs. "Just don't expect a whole lot. I didn't understand half the gibberish he was saying."

They start to drift out of the hall, back towards the kitchen and the makeshift transmitting base, and that's when Minseok notices the other half of the pair is missing. Sometime during the discussion he must have managed to wriggle away from Hakyeon, because he's nowhere to be seen now. Minseok has a hunch as to where he might be, though, and it's with that thought that he starts to climb the stairs again, heading back towards the two connected rooms. Sure enough, when he opens the door the familiar sight of Junmyeon's back greets him, bent over something on the bed. The shirt is torn and bloodstained in a way that Junmyeon's never is though, and when he turns to look at Minseok, the eyes are very much not Junmyeon's. They're the same eyes that Minseok has looked up every evening to see poring over a book or staring out the window. They're staring at Minseok now and their owner does not seem surprised to see him there. When Minseok comes further into the room, he sees that the thing on the bed is an open first aid kit. Probably one of the boxes that Junmyeon insists be kept stocked in each of the vans.

"Are you alright?" Minseok asks.

Not-Junmyeon nods. When Minseok gives him a disbelieving look, he brings a hand up to touch his shoulder. "One of them took my knife," he says, by way of explanation. 

Minseok leans back to take a closer look at the back of his shoulder and, sure enough, one of the cuts in the shirt shows a nasty gash across his shoulderblade. While most of the blood on Sehun was from his attackers, most of the blood here comes from the wound and Minseok winces a little. It's in a place that will be hard to reach, Minseok realizes, and yet he had shown no inclination to ask for help, clearly intending to cover it up with as little fuss as possible. Minseok settles himself on the bed, taking the first aid kit and tugging the shirt off of "Junmyeon's" back so that it hangs loosely around his arms. While he initially tries to hold onto the bandages, "Junmyeon" ends up sitting awkwardly facing the wall while Minseok cleans the cut as best he can. The peroxide makes him jerk slightly, but he doesn't say a word until the last of the butterfly bandages is in place, covered with gauze and medical tape. Then he takes the box back, closing it up again with a mumbled "thanks." Minseok sighs.

"Just don't move around too much or you'll tear everything loose. You really ought to have stitches, but I'd just make a mess of that. Anyway, I should be thanking you, I think," he says. When he gets an inquisitive look, Minseok explains, "Sehun told us what happened. How you got them both out, I mean. So thanks for that. For keeping him safe."

"Junmyeon" looks at him blankly. "That is what I agreed to do," he says.

"Yeah, but... when someone gets hurt saving one of your friends' asses, you're supposed to thank them." Still the blank look. Minseok doesn't know what else to say. Instead he holds out a hand between them. "I'm Minseok," he finishes lamely."

He doesn't know how to describe what he means, especially to someone who clearly sees what happened as a fulfillment of basic duty, but a sense of obligation prompts Minseok into doing it. When someone saves one of your protege's lives, the least you can do in return is let them call you by your proper name. "Junmyeon" stares at the hand for a moment before extending his own.

"Taekwoon," he says quietly, and Minseok is oddly unsurprised, as if he had half-guessed already. Going by a simple process of elimination, he probably should have consciously figured it out sooner. Still, when they shake hands, Minseok has to smile.

"Nice to meet you," he says. "Properly, at least."

Taekwoon nods. He looks around the room, eyes resting on the book Minseok left lying in the middle of the bed. Minseok wishes he had put it back on the chair before leaving the room, but he hadn't really been thinking about the book at the time.

"Yeah, I think I lost your place," he says. "Sorry."

Taekwoon flips through the book to find the page he'd left it open to earlier. "Did you stay in here until we came back?" he asks, eyes still on the page. His voice is casual, but he sounds like he is actually interested in hearing the answer.

Minseok leaves, taking the armchair so that their usual positions are reversed. "I got used to being somewhere not surrounded by squabbling idiots. Is your gang just as loud, or is it just us?"

Taekwoon doesn't point out that Minseok's own room is right through the door, but he also doesn't seem as bothered by the idea of Minseok just hanging out in his room as Minseok had been worried he might be. "They can be unbearable," is all he says.

"Life would be much easier if we could keep them tied up in the basement until we needed them," Minseok mourns.

The corner of Taekwoon's mouth definitely quirks at that. "There is a very large safe downstairs," he points out.

"I like the way you think," Minseok kicks his legs up over the arm of the chair. Sehun's limbs are very good for draping carelessly, at least. That's probably why Sehun does it so much.

Taekwoon picks up his suit jacket from where he'd hung it over the bedpost, fishing around in the pockets and pulling out a gun which he holds out to Minseok. "I think this is yours," he says.

Minseok takes it, and when his fingers wrap around the grip they nearly cover Taekwoon's, Sehun's hands looking about twice as big as Junmyeon's in a way he'd never noticed before. He sets the gun in his lap before holding up his hand in front of the window. He's heard of knowing things "like the back of your hand" but Minseok thinks now that that's a ridiculous idea since he's trying hard to remember what the shape of his proper hand is like and how different it is from the hand in front of his face now. _When was the last time anyone actually looked at the back of their hand?_ he thinks, feeling the different way the gun sits in a different hand. Later, when they go back downstairs and Taekwoon is engulfed in a sea of people all clamoring to appreciate his "heroism", Minseok goes up to Lu Han and grabs his hand. He holds his own proper hand up against Sehun's and ignores the strange looks Lu Han is giving him. It's easy to take your own hand for granted, he realizes, but when he gets his body back (not if, _when_ ) he promises to look at it every day until he really can say he knows something like the back of his own hand.

 

They may not have managed to get their hands on a way to reverse the effects of the gas, but they know that one exists now, which most of them seem to feel is worth the trouble they went to. Minseok doesn't think any of them know about the bandages hidden under Taekwoon's shirt, but since he doesn't seem concerned by them Minseok supposes it's not his business to begrudge the calling the expedition a "win". After it becomes clear that they're not going to acquire the chemical through the company itself, the only option that remains is to steal it for themselves. This requires even more planning than their first attempt, though, so while Junmyeon goes through another series of strategizing meetings, dragging Lu Han in with him to dig up extra intel, the basement crew disappears back into the safe to wring as much information as they can out of the crates with the new information they picked up from the late lab assistant. Taekwoon explains that Hongbin had been a brilliant chemist before his eagerness to study had flung him in amongst loan sharks, driving him into the city's crime underbelly and VIXX's gang. Sanghyuk goes along not out of any particular gifts in that field but simply, as Taekwoon puts it, "because they're always together." Kyungsoo, as their armorer and general head of security, hurries back and forth between the basement and the various errands Junmyeon sends him on to build up their supplies for whatever final assault they end up making on the company. As a result, he is even more harried and short tempered than usual, which is only made worse by the fact that Baekhyun is needling him at every available opportunity. Baekhyun is easy to pick out, even in Taekwoon's body, because he is every bit as loud and abrasive as usual. Minseok thinks he stubs his own toes now just as often as Baekhyun does, since they've both landed in bodies so much bigger than they're used to and have yet to figure out where all their edges are, but Baekhyun is definitely more vocal about it, howling exaggeratedly while hopping up and down on one foot. He continues his tradition of waking up the youngest members with loud, off key renditions of showtunes and pop songs from ten years ago. He continues to mock Zitao mercilessly whenever he trips over his words and falls over himself laughing at "Zitao's" truly terrible broken Korean, much to the real Zitao's chagrin. Most of all, though, he trails after Kyungsoo like an annoyingly large shadow, making snide comments about everything he does. When Kyungsoo threatens to break his leg, he switches to obnoxious catcalls whenever Kyungsoo is in sight, arguing that he's absolutely allowed to appreciate himself and it's not his fault that Kyungsoo was the one who ended up in his beautiful body and Kyungsoo needs to learn to "love himself."

"I love myself fine," Kyungsoo grinds out through his teeth. "It's _you_ I have a problem with."

"It's probably fate or karma or something," Baekhyun tells him. "You spent so much time imagining yourself in my pants that it actually happened. Is it everything you dreamed of, Kyungsoo?"

Kyungsoo is shaking with fury when he finally storms out of the room amidst yells of "Hate to see you go, but love to watch you leave!" He finally reappears an hour later with both eyebrows shaved off, to Baekhyun's horror.

"Where are you going?" Baekhyun asks frantically when Kyungsoo heads for the front door. "You can't go out like that!"

"I'm going to visit all of your favorite haunts," Kyungsoo tells him, "so that when you next show up, everyone will remember you as 'that guy with no eyebrows'. Let this be a lesson to you that if you get on my nerves, I will find a way to ruin the things you love for you."

Baekhyun would have tried to keep him in the house with his superior strength but Junmyeon is firm that they need Kyungsoo to continue visiting town and running errands for them. Personally, Minseok thinks that Junmyeon is glad to see Baekhyun at a disadvantage for once, especially as a side effect of getting necessary tasks done. 

Those without specific tasks to do try to stay out of the way as much as possible. Since he replaced the boards on the windows in his room, Lu Han has had no further encounters with the "death bird." While they hear noises coming from the attic sometimes, it seems that as long as they stay away from the trapdoor and the noises, the bird is quite happy to go its own way without bothering them. At least, it appears that way until one morning Minseok hears a loud shriek coming from the bathroom. Since he's still half-asleep, the boards still over his own windows keep the room fairly dark, he thinks for a moment that Zitao has just had another ghost scare. Then he realizes that 1) it is actually 9:34 in the morning, not 1 AM like he'd originally thought, and 2) Zitao is not in Zitao's body right now, so who on earth is doing the screaming?

By the time he gets out into the hallway, several of the others have already emerged to find out what's going on. The door to the bathroom is hanging wide open, steam billowing out along with the sound of the shower running. Inside, they see "Zitao" clutching his chest, half fallen out of the shower stall and held up only by his death grip on the shower curtain. As they watch, the curtain rips out of the rings holding it to the bar, toppling "Zitao" over onto the wet tiles.

"What is going on?" Yifan demands, the severity of his scowl diminished somewhat by the truly spectacular bedhead he has going. 

"Hakyeon," "Zitao" gasps from the floor. "You- wait. No. Not Hakyeon. I. I think I hit my head. Birds don't have glowing red eyes, do they?"

"What?" Yifan asks again, genuinely confused now.

" _Did you see the death bird?_ " Lu Han asks intently, kneeling on the floor next to "Zitao's" head.

"What death bird?" Yifan is still trying to get a grasp on the situation. "There's no bird anywhere."

"Taxi, follow that owl!" "Zitao" points a finger at the ceiling, sounding slightly hysterical. "Is it like the Grim? Am I going to die now that I've seen it?"

"One day we will all die," says Lu Han seriously.

" _Oh my god_ ," whispers "Zitao." Lu Han pats him on the shoulder comfortingly.

"I would put some clothes on if I were you," he says.

A search of that floor shows no sign of a bird, either of the death-variety or otherwise, and the trapdoor is firmly closed. Other than the fact the Lu Han insists that he's seen it before, the only sign they find that "Zitao" hadn't imagined the whole thing is a single feather at the foot of the stairs down into the entrance hall. None of the doors or windows to the outside are left open, so no one has any idea where the thing could have gotten to. Lu Han takes to carrying a broomstick and poking above every doorway before he goes through it, as if he's afraid it's waiting to descend on him the moment he drops his guard. 

Once again Minseok retreats in the hopes of finding peace and quiet from the antics going on in the house, only this time he makes it his mission to clear out the path leading down to the lake. To that end, he unearths a machete from the dilapidated shed next to the house and sharpens it on a whetstone he finds buried under one of the countless tangled garden hoses. Taekwoon, unsurprisingly, joins him in his endeavors to stay out of the house. "Chanyeol" spends a few hours trying to root out the saplings that have started to grow in the path, but he gives up before half of them are done, handing the shovel to Taekwoon and disappearing. The path itself is easy to clear once that is done, though the problem still remains that the ground itself is rough and uneven. It was once level, but the water that must pour down the hill after every rainstorm has carved grooves in the dirt and washed away any gravel that was once there. There's not much Minseok can do about that other than carry away the logs that poke over into the walkway. One of the logs they move turns out to house a hornets' nest and the stinging insects send them sprinting down the freshly cleared path, down the pier, and straight into the icy water. Minseok has to admit that Lu Han had not been joking when he said it was freezing, but it's worth it to see Taekwoon standing on the bank afterwards, looking bedraggled and trying to hold his cold, sopping wet clothes away from his body. 

What all the bustle in the house does, other than drive them into landscaping and home improvement endeavors, is produce a timetable for their operations. Within three days, Hongbin emerges from the basement with a fresh analysis of the gas and its properties, based on the new information they've gotten. He is able to estimate that a reversal of the switch will be easy until about a month after they first encountered the gas, and after that the likelihood of success drops off sharply with every week that passes. Going on this new knowledge, they will have to break into the company factory within the month if they're to expect a reasonable degree of success. Junmyeon immediately reveals his plan for further reconnaissance and for getting their own people on the inside to get the security access they need. Several of the youngest-looking members of the group are going to be placed in various low-level positions within the company with the help of "Jaehwan's" expertise in creating covers and generating identities secure enough to pass security and background checks. The goal will be to collect as much information on the layout and inner workings of the building so that they can follow the straightest line possible to get the chemical they need. On top of that, one of them will need to figure out the security clearances they need to get into the storage itself, since they can expect to encounter far more than a simple lock and key, and then grab whatever passes they need to get everyone into the storage facilities when the time comes.

"If there's a card you need to swipe," says "Jaehwan", "then get it to me and I can duplicate it. If it's a magnetic pulse, get me the frequency and I can make it happen. Return whatever it is as soon as possible so it's not missed before the time comes, but just get it to me first."

Minseok remembers vaguely that the reason they'd worked so hard to get Yixing into their group (other than his partnership with Lu Han, whom they had also desperately needed) was his skills in forgery, but it's hard to picture Yixing in the grinning, excitable man in front of them now, wiggling his fingers. He doesn't have much time to contemplate it, because then "Jaehwan" turns and starts handing out packets with their new cover stories to all the people going undercover. Minseok stares down at the manila envelope, upending it into his lap. A sheaf of clipped papers falls out, followed by a handful of plastic cards that scatter across the floor. Minseok picks up an ID and stares at Sehun's face stamped across with official-looking watermarks and holographic seals.

"What's this?" he asks.

"Your new identity," says Junmyeon. "You're in one of the youngest bodies in the group, so you'll be going in as an intern. You'll need to learn all the information in that packet before you can start, so you better get studying. That goes for all of you."

"How come he's going?" Minseok points at Lu Han, who is holding a stack of credit cards in between his fingers, flipping pages and scanning the story of his new life. "You said only the youngest people were going."

"I said the youngest- _looking_ people were going," Junmyeon repeats. "Sorry."

Baekhyun snickers under his breath until Kyungsoo punches him in the thigh. Taekwoon sighs. Minseok's fairly sure he's keeping tally of the number of bruises he'll have to deal with when he gets back into his own body. As much as Minseok finds the idea of going undercover distasteful, the thought that they'll finally be moving closer to their goal keeps him from protesting the idea that he looks just as young as Sehun, who is practically a kindergartner as far as he is concerned.

Several days of drilling later, and they are deemed ready to start moving into their assumed lives. The arrivals will be staggered over the course of the week, with the more vital roles going first. Minseok is taking over the identity of a third year university student in a non-paid intern position for the summer, so he's one of the first people to arrive. Bright and early Monday morning, Jongdae drives him into town and drops him at the very furthest subway stop along with Hongbin who, since he has the youngest appearance of all at the moment, will be interning along with Minseok. Zitao, as far as they know, has a job in the mailroom, but he'll be arriving separately later on in the week, along with Lu Han. Not-Zitao (Taekwoon says he's pretty sure it's actually Jaehwan) and Sanghyuk will show up at some point the week after that as janitors. With that level of access and invisibility, their goal will be to scope out the route the combined gang will need to take, noting the security camera and their blind spots in particular. When they think they've gathered as much information they can then Kyungsoo will come in on the last day under the guise of a rich young businessman taking a tour of the facilities. His job at that point will be to get in contact with each of them in turn, take the physical items they've managed to swipe (pass cards, keys, and the like), get them to "Jaehwan" for copying, and then bring them back before the end of the day. And then... then all that remains is the actual heist. If they do their jobs properly, they'll know exactly where to go and how to avoid being caught or even seen.

It's with this lofty goal that Minseok rides the escalator up onto the main street at 8:30 on Monday morning. The effect is somewhat marred by the fact that the sun is shining directly into his eyes, effectively blinding him, but Hongbin manages to nudge him in the right direction by slamming him in the hip with his heavy laptop case. Minseok isn't sure why Hongbin gets a laptop case and all he gets is a ratty-looking backpack, but it probably has something to do with the fact that Hongbin's "internship" will involve far more actual lab work than Minseok's. Minseok, as far as he knows, will be undertaking such thrilling tasks as clearing paper jams, fetching coffee and paper clips, and alphabetizing file cabinets. Exactly the sort of job he had been terrified of finding himself stuck in when he realized there were more exciting and lucrative, albeit illegal, career choices out there. Still, Minseok is ready to suck it up if it means getting out of there in the end with a minimum of bullet wounds. Sehun and Taekwoon's escapade had been close enough, so whatever they can do to prevent that happening again is all to the good. Since it won't do to have the two of them arrive together, Hongbin heads ahead to the bus stop where they'll depart for the factory and research facility just outside the far end of town while Minseok takes a detour to a nearby chain coffee shop before he follows. His coffee is just cool enough to drink without getting blisters on the roof of his mouth when he has to get off the bus, and the one sip he takes he almost ends up choking on at the sight of the complex's main lobby. For a second he thinks he's walked through the wrong door, stumbled into a greenhouse or something, but no, there's only one building on this street and anyway, there's a desk that he finally spots at the far end, just to the left of that giant fern.

The receptionist hands him a badge without giving him a second glance, waving him towards the wall behind her where there are two elevators. Just as Minseok is wondering which one he's supposed to take, let alone which floor he's supposed to go to, the one closest to him dings and the doors slide open. Instantly Minseok finds himself all but engulfed by an exuberant older businessman who shakes his hand, pulling him into the elevator about as gently as a riptide. Minseok couldn't escape even if he wanted to, and after first the jungle of a lobby and now this, he's not entirely sure he _doesn't_ want to, mission or no.

"Nice to meet you, nice to meet you!" he says. "You must be Park Hyunchul?"

_Oh,_ Minseok thinks, trying to gather his thoughts. _Right. That's me._

"Yes," he says, cracking each of his knuckles as surreptitiously as possible. He starts to suspect one of them might be dislocated. "I'm starting my first day as an intern here."

"Yes, of course!" the man says. "You'll be working with me mostly. My name is Park Jinyoung, by the way."

After his initially overwhelming introduction, Minseok warms up to his new supervisor fairly well. In other circumstances, he thinks he could see himself coming to... well, if not _enjoy_ , then at least not actively _dislike_ working for him. As it is, Minseok has to remember that in less than a month he will be stealing potentially another several billion dollars out from under this man's nose, so he would do well not to get too attached. This becomes slightly easier when they exit the elevators into what looks like a sea of cubicles which Jinyoung surveys proudly like a pharaoh overseeing contingents of slaves painstakingly hauling limestone blocks. Minseok wonders if the fatality rate is comparable. Jinyoung turns to him, eyes resting on the paper cup of coffee still in Minseok's hands.

"Oh, you didn't have to bring me coffee," he says, taking the cup from Minseok's unresisting fingers. "Though, I will admit, I am aching for something besides this sludge they serve up in the breakroom here." He takes a sip and wrinkles his nose. "Next time though, a little easier on the sugar."

He claps Minseok on the shoulder, dropping the cup into the closest trash can before dragging him off on the grand tour. Minseok sighs heavily. This is exactly why he always dreaded the idea of an office job.

"-and then he had me stuffing envelopes for the rest of the day. My _tongue_ has paper cuts now."

Minseok is lying on the bed in Taekwoon's room as usual, though the setting is somewhat different from usual. He had come straight up the stairs upon arriving back at the lake house after his first day in the office, not even stopping to kick off his shoes no matter how loudly Junmyeon called after him. He had walked through the door into the room, dropped his bag and jacket on the floor, and pitched facefirst onto the bed where Taekwoon was reading another book. He had then proceeded to scream into the mattress until he ran out of breath, at which point he just lay there with a mouth full of sheets (someone had washed them after all, he notes). Taekwoon had waited until he was done and then reached out to pat his head gently.

"Feel better now?" he had asked and that was when Minseok had unloaded every single infuriating occurrence that had transpired in what he was now convinced was a corporate hell.

Now he stares up at the ceiling and considers the fact that if he walks out towards the lake right now, he might trip over a log and break his neck, or drown, or even die of hypothermia and then he wouldn't have to go back the next day. When he voices this thought, Taekwoon informs him that that's a stupid idea and none of them have time to dig more than a shallow grave right now so Minseok would probably end up being dug up and eaten by coyotes. 

"That's morbid and disgusting," Minseok says. "And also unrealistic. I don't think coyotes even live around here."

"In that case, be my guest," Taekwoon shrugs. 

He's reading what looks like a guide to edible plants, which once again makes Minseok wonder if he's planning to strike off and live in the woods on his own. When Minseok had finished his rant, he'd just reached out to pat his head again and his hand is still just barely resting there, like he'd gotten distracted once again by the utterly fascinating book in front of him and forgotten to move it. Minseok is not a touchy person, so he wonders if his current lack of inclination to throw off the hand is a sign that Lu Han's clinging is finally rubbing off on him. Even if he doesn't say anything now, the definite physical presence of another person, one whose presence he doesn't utterly hate, nearby is relaxing. Actually, probably _especially_ if he doesn't say anything. The lack of pressure to say the right thing is one of the things he finds most appealing about Taekwoon's company.

"Thanks," he says, and when he tips his head up Taekwoon quickly pulls back his hand like he's just realized it's still resting on Minseok's head.

"For what?" he asks.

Minseok shrugs. "Just listening, I guess. This is the second tantrum you've had to put up with from me since we got here. I swear I'm not usually this bratty. That's usually Sehun's job."

It's Taekwoon's turn to shrug then. "I didn't think you were," he says. "And I don't mind. It's... kind of cute."

"What?" Minseok rolls over to look at him. Taekwoon's eyes are firmly fixed on the book. "Did you just say my temper tantrums were cute?"

"It's..." Taekwoon trails off. He licks his lips, tongue poking out for a brief moment while he thinks. "Sehun is a cute person. You all think so. You feel about him and the other young ones the same way we feel about Sanghyuk. You just... appeared the same age as the body you are in. It fit."

Minseok considers this, considers the idea that Taekwoon notices cute things. That he _likes_ cute things. He tries to picture Taekwoon back in his proper body, watching a cat cleaning its ears, and the image makes him laugh out loud. Taekwoon glares at him over the cover of the book, so Minseok waves his hands and tries to turn it into a cough.

"I'm not making fun of you, I swear," he says. "I guess it's true I was acting childish, so I see why it would be entertaining."

Taekwoon shakes his head. "It's more than that," he says. "You have always appeared to be one of the more mature members of your group; you seem to be more of a voice of reason than many of the others here, and I have seen you take care of many of their complaints and problems. It was a change to see you frustrated on your own behalf. You looked younger."

Minseok picks at the sheets uncomfortably. "You make it sound like I'm some sort of selfless, long-suffering do-gooder," he says. "I actually twisted Baekhyun's arm today when his imitations got too annoying-"

"Thank you for that," cuts in Taekwoon dryly.

"I didn't damage anything," Minseok scoffs. "But anyway, if I were someone who takes care of people's problems I wouldn't be hiding from all the problems in here."

"When the situation has called for it, you have done everything you could," Taekwoon insists calmly. "You were there when I broke the cup that first morning, you went in search of the bird to calm the others' fears..." he looks away to the side. "And you helped me when I came back hurt that day."

Now Minseok really does feel uncomfortable. "Junmyeon cleaned up the broken cup," he mumbles.

"Mm," Taekwoon hums, but he doesn't say anything further and when Minseok looks up, he is no longer even pretending to read. Instead, he sits there looking at Minseok intently until Minseok pushes himself upright.

" _What?_ " he asks.

"I was with him that day and I saw what you think of as 'bratty' for myself," Taekwoon says. "You are _not_ the same." He takes a deep breath. "And even if you were, I still would not mind listening."

Then he turns back to his book completely, leaving Minseok with nothing to do but stare at the spine and wonder when one of his most problematic enemies turned into a willing ear for all his frustrations.

The next day at the office doesn't go much better, nor the day after that. Minseok has learned not to bring coffee into the office, lest his supervisor mistake it for his own, so as a result Minseok gains several painful new blisters on the roof of his mouth. He would drink the office coffee but, just as his boss had said, the pot in the breakroom is full of an unpalatable sludge and Minseok didn't even know it was _possible_ to get coffee that wrong, but he would rather deal with second degree burns on the inside of his mouth than attempt to drink it again. Halfway through the week, Minseok stumbles off the bus and into the coffee shop for an early evening jolt of caffeine only to find Taekwoon already there. When Minseok slides into a seat at the table next to his, he explains that their two new janitors have a later shift than Minseok does, so he's waiting here to drive them back. Minseok offers to keep him company and that's how they end up sitting in a chain coffee shop at 8 o'clock in the evening, hands trembling with one too many lattes.

"This is not normal," Minseok says, staring at his fingers. "That was only three cups of coffee. I know I've had double that before I started to shake."

"New bodies," says Taekwoon. He holds up his own cup, which is in danger of sloshing over. "They're not used to the same caffeine levels. Does he usually drink as much coffee?"

"I don't know if he ever drinks coffee," Minseok says, trying to think of the times he's seen Junmyeon drink caffeine. "I think he just exists on tea and nerves. Do you think we'll be able to sleep tonight?"

"Probably not," Taekwoon says gloomily.

Sure enough, Minseok lies awake until four in the morning before finally succumbing to sleep, only to have to wake up a few hours later to go back to the office. He delivers files to entirely the wrong floor and nearly falls asleep slumped over the copier with two and a half hours left to go in the workday. After that they limit themselves to one cup of coffee each evening and then stare forlornly at the menu for the rest of the time before probably-Jaehwan and Sanghyuk show up to meet them.To work off even that excess energy, they end up joining Zitao in the gym that he discovered off to one side of the library, the door hidden behind a pool table. Minseok drags Lu Han along despite all his protests that he, unlike the rest of them, knows nothing about martial arts. Minseok tells Lu Han there's no way he's going to let Minseok's body get out of shape. He can just stay on the treadmill or ride the standing bicycle if he's not going to try anything else, but he most certainly is going to join them in working out. If nothing else, it has the effect of making Lu Han even more focused on gathering intel for their final mission, the sheer prospect of escaping the gym proving to be a better motivation than getting out of Minseok's body.

The first session is enough to tell them that they're going to have more problems than simply their different sizes. Zitao does fairly well since Jongin is almost as active as he is, but Minseok and Taekwoon run into difficulty right away. Sehun is in good shape, but he's not as flexible as Minseok and he lacks the muscle tone and explosive power that Minseok is used to putting into his movements. As for Junmyeon, the most that can probably be said for him is that he doesn't get winded going up stairs. This means that their usual training regimens turn out to be too strenuous for their current bodies to keep up with. Minseok doesn't know how much difference he can make in Sehun's body before they find a way to switch back, but he's damned if he's going to let this hold him back. The very next day after they start, Minseok is so sore he can't even walk across a room without wincing and the stairs up to the bedrooms feel like Mt. Everest. Sehun is not pleased with what Minseok is doing, and tells him in no uncertain terms.

"I'm improving it," Minseok argues. "I'm getting you into shape without you even having to lift a finger!"

"I don't _want_ to be improved!" Sehun counters. "Weren't you ever in the Boy Scouts? When you stay somewhere, you always leave it the same way you found it!"

"Were _you_ in the Boy Scouts?" Baekhyun says and sits up, suddenly wickedly interested. "Do tell."

Sehun clears his throat. "... No comment."

Their days start to settle into a pattern, and they're nearing the end of the second week since the undercover mission began when the next "attack" comes. No one even sees the bird this time, but when Minseok arrives in the coffee shop he finds "Chanyeol" sitting in their usual spot instead of Taekwoon.

"What are you doing here?" he asks.

"Well, you're polite, now aren't you?" "Chanyeol" raises an eyebrow. "I dunno, I just got some keys thrown at me and told to wait here for the other guys. No one ever said I'd be driving you back too. Should you really be looking like you know us? What if someone from the company comes in and sees us talking?"

"It's never really been a problem," Minseok says, but he's not really paying attention. "Sorry, I have to- I'm gonna try to catch Jongdae before he leaves. See you back at the house."

He leaves "Chanyeol" in the coffee shop hissing about maintaining their cover, already out the door and taking the steps down into the subway two at a time. His detour to get coffee means he has barely any time to get across the city to where Jongdae is waiting for Hongbin before he just leaves. Back at the house he finds Taekwoon crouched on the bathroom floor, surrounded by bloodied towels and rags. For a moment Minseok's heart stops because they're not supposed to have made any moves towards conflict with the company yet so _how could something have gone wrong already_ , but then Taekwoon turns around and he looks genuinely relieved to see Minseok.

"Can you hold it?" he asks, and that's when Minseok sees the bundle in his hands. 

The blood, Taekwoon tells him, is from the animal dropped in his room by an unsettlingly large bird. The bird was startled upon finding the room occupied and dropped its prey, a torn and half-dead young rabbit, which then flopped around bleeding on Taekwoon's floor until he wrapped it in one of the sheets from the bed and brought it in here to clean up. Minseok doesn't think he would have even bothered trying to clean it -- the thing honestly looks almost half-eaten already -- but Taekwoon places it into his hands and sets about wiping away the clotted blood on its face and back. It shouldn't even be able to move at this point, but it still struggles to get away. Minseok can feel its heart pounding against his hand underneath all the matted fur. Taekwoon makes nonsense hushing noises, stroking its head and ears with one hand while he takes a wet cloth to its hind legs. It looks a little less ghastly with most of the blood cleared away, but one leg hangs limply, its ears are in shreds, and it's missing one eye. Minseok wouldn't put its odds of surviving the night at more than 50/50. He considers telling Taekwoon this, but he has to know it already; no one in their line of work gets this far without being able to assess the severity of a wound accurately. If he knows, Taekwoon doesn't seem swayed by the knowledge. He cleans the cuts with the peroxide from the first aid kit before rinsing them with warm water, sews them up neatly, and wraps as much as he can of the rabbit with adhesive wrap bandages. A spot is cleared for it in the corner of Taekwoon's room, next to the single tall bookcase from which he has been pulling all his various books, and in this spot they pile up blankets into a makeshift nest. It's less than ideal, but the house is completely devoid of rabbit-care materials. Taekwoon sits crosslegged next to it on the floor with a cup full of water and a spoon with which to drip it into the rabbit's mouth. It's wrapped up too thick to move much and it seems resigned to its fate anyway, so after a few minutes it takes the water, lapping it up awkwardly out of the side of its mouth. It takes a long while to empty the cup, and the whole time Minseok sits on the bed watching Taekwoon's concentrated expression. Junmyeon is not a large person and yet the way Taekwoon sits makes it look like he's trying to fit himself into half the space he would normally occupy. He doesn't even realize he's doing it, Minseok realizes, but everything about him screams that he is a person long accustomed to making himself look smaller and less threatening. Minseok thinks about what Taekwoon must usually look like and finds it difficult because his body is currently occupied by Baekhyun, who is everything Minseok has come to realize that Taekwoon is _not_. He imagines the same silent stare and distant mien in the taller, sturdier body and suddenly it makes more sense that he would have to take care not to frighten people when he didn't mean to. His hands are gentle in a very careful way, as if he has spent a long time teaching himself. 

_He recently shot a man the back of the head,_ Minseok remembers. _I know for a fact that he has killed multiple people in less time than I have known him._

_He did it to protect someone you care about,_ another part of him chimes in.

_How did someone like him end up in the mob?_ wonders Minseok. _He kills people, steals their belongings, extorts money and information out of them... and takes care of bunnies. He likes cute things and risks his life to watch out for teenagers he would have shot himself the week before, just because he promised to do it._

Minseok has long since trying to make sense of the contradictions in his own life, so he's not sure why he's so invested in reconciling the various sides of one Jung Taekwoon. Still, he thinks that it might plague him until he figures out until exactly what he's supposed to think about this person whose room he invades on a near-nightly basis now. Then Taekwoon looks up, one hand trapped under a sleeping rabbit's head and the other holding an empty water glass, and Minseok decides it's a lost cause. Some paradoxes just _are_ and right now, in the middle of body switching and deadly owl attacks and too much evening coffee, Taekwoon just _is_.

And at least he doesn't talk as much as Lu Han, which is definitely a bonus.

 

Over the next few days Minseok maps out more of the factory complex while he runs more meaningless tasks for Jinyoung and his other superiors. Being the new intern means that he is essentially at the very bottom of the office hierarchy, just above the sentient mold in the staff refrigerator and somewhere below the new dog one of his new supervisors has gotten and which he brings into the office far more often than Minseok would like. The extremely energetic pit bull is also extremely slobbery and not terribly well leash-trained, which Minseok finds out for himself when Sooman catches him on the way out for his lunch break and cajoles him into taking the dog out for his bathroom break "since he's going out that way." Woohyun -- or Wuffles, as Minseok likes to call him, because that's the sound he makes and because the idea of giving this ridiculous dog a person name is absurd -- likes to pull ahead to sniff at one particular clump of grass, which is indistinguishable from every other clump of grass to everyone else except Wuffles, and will seems perfectly happy to stand there smelling the grass and eating bits of it occasionally for hours on end. If Minseok tries to pull him away, he just lies down in the middle of the path and looks up mournfully. Minseok is left pulling at the leash of what looks like an utterly exhausted dog and trying to smile at everyone who passes by in a way that will mark him as 'definitely not an animal abuser.'

"You are the absolute worst trained dog I have ever met in my entire life," Minseok growls when he manages to lure Wuffles back into the lobby elevator with the last few bites of his sandwich.

"Wmff," says Wuffles happily and licks his lips.

Taekwoon seems to find this story highly amusing. He would probably have no problem making Wuffles do whatever he wanted, thinks Minseok while he watches Taekwoon feed the rabbit a piece of lettuce. The rabbit had not only survived that first night, much to Minseok's surprise, but it had recovered enough that within two days it was hobbling small distances to get food and drop its little rabbit pellets all over its corner of the room. One of the first things they had done was to bring in a makeshift litter box and fill it with hay, but either the rabbit couldn't work up the energy to get over the tiny lip or it delights in making more work for them. Minseok runs out of patience with it fairly quickly, but Taekwoon just sweeps the floor and gives the creature more lettuce. This might be the reason it likes Taekwoon more, but Minseok is more than happy to leave the pet care to him.

When they're both home and the rabbit is taken care of, they spend most of their time in the gym experimenting with new hand-to-hand fighting styles to fit their new bodies. They both turn out to have a thorough grounding in martial arts, but they've each developed habits and styles that don't work well with their changed sizes. Limbs shorter than what he's used to are what had made Taekwoon miss the counter with the mug that first day and it means that for most of the first session he has trouble making any of his attacks connect at all. Minseok has the opposite problem. Since Sehun's body is much longer than he's used to, he finds himself overshooting most of the time, hitting with his shin or knee instead of his foot or missing entirely. Even when they figure out the distances, their strategies are all wrong. From watching Zitao and practicing with him, Minseok is able to reason his way through some style changes. He practices dodging backwards and sliding his counterkicks back to give him more distance.

"Look," Minseok says when they stop to catch their breaths after an unsuccessful sparring match, "I'm naturally going to want to keep you further away because I'm taller. My limbs are longer now, so when you're over there I can still hit you, but you can't reach me."

"It's going to give you the advantage if you can shove me back further," Taekwoon muses. "So what I need to do is get inside your reach" He shakes the hair out of his eyes. "If I get in close, there's nothing you can do."

"Pretty much. Want to go again?"

The very first time Taekwoon starts forward, Minseok picks up his front leg and pushes him back with a cut kick to Taekwoon's stomach in the hopes of knocking him off balance. He succeeds in keeping him back for several minutes, rebuffing every one of his forward advances with a pushing kick to keep him in Minseok's ideal striking range. He doesn't do a good enough job varying his patterns or hiding his movements because when he picks up a foot to kick, Taekwoon slips to the side past it and then he's inches away, knocking Minseok's leg away. Minseok's breath hitches just as much with the unexpected proximity as from the solid punch Taekwoon lands on his stomach. Looking at your opponent's face is the best way to miss seeing a move coming but Taekwoon's face is tilted up and so so close and Minseok can't look away. His expression is still and calculating, but his eyes are shining with just enough smug triumph to make them glitter and Minseok can't stop watching the light there. He feels a hand slide up over his shoulder to grab the back of his collar and then Taekwoon's leg is right behind his, his hip shoving Minseok's forward at the same time that he pushes Minseok's shoulders back, and he's still inches away but then Minseok topples over backwards. He hits the ground hard and Taekwoon doesn't even try to catch him. He stands back, the corners his mouth curving up the tiniest bit.

"Close enough?" he asks, as if it isn't obvious.

"Yeah," Minseok wheezes. "Definitely close enough."

When they leave the gym, Lu Han suddenly materializes. Minseok isn't sure he wasn't hiding behind the curtains. He latches onto Minseok's side, dragging him off towards the kitchen, and by the time Minseok has time to look around Taekwoon has disappeared up the stairs.

"I haven't talked to you in like five centuries," Lu Han complains. "We are undercover in the same building but they're keeping me alone in an airless, windowless prison box to sort their credit card applications and then when we get back here you spend all your time with your new boyfriend and I think I'm going a little bit insane so you have to come swimming with me now."

"You'd see me if you ever came to work out with us instead of giving up after two days," Minseok says. "And what?"

"Like I really want to spend any more time in a windowless room. I'm making the kids play soccer with me instead. Anyway, I don't want to intrude on your _alone time,_ " Lu Han waggles his eyebrows. "Your exercise is very important, I'm sure."

"He's... not my boyfriend," Minseok flounders. "I don't know where you got that idea."

"I dunno," Lu Han says, "it might have something to do with the fact that you're practically joined at the hip now and have apparently adopted a crippled bunny together and go on coffee dates just about every evening. Excuse me for jumping to conclusions." His expression says that he thinks Minseok might be the insane one now. "If you haven't had the 'what exactly is this relationship' talk yet, then you really should think about getting on that. Communication is key, you know."

"We're not together," Minseok insists. "Less than a month ago we were pointing guns at each other!"

"Hey, I don't judge," Lu Han holds up his hands. "You are two consenting adults and it is none of my business." He looks thoughtful. "If you're not actually dating though, does that mean I have a chance?"

"Lu Han, no, please stop talking," Minseok says, slightly hysterically.

"Is it the face?" Lu Han asks seriously. "Is the fact that I have your face making it weird?"

"Trust me, it's not the face that's the weirdest thing about this," says Minseok.

"If we made out right now, would that technically count as narcissism?"

" _Lu Han-_ "

"I'm just asking!" Lu Han pulls Minseok's hands away from his face and tugs him towards the door. "Come swim with me," he says. "And... just think about it, okay? Not... the dating me thing. I mean, I couldn't possibly date anyone who's competition in the looks department. But." He looks at Minseok out of the corner of his eye. "You two enjoy being around each other. More than you enjoy being around most other people, I think. You shouldn't ignore that." His serious expression vanishes as quickly as it had arrived. "Just like you shouldn't ignore _me_. Now, come on. It's my turn to shove you into fucking _Lake Michigan_ or wherever they're getting this arctic water."

Even the icy lake doesn't do much to clear Minseok's head after Lu Han's words though. He realizes it's true that he's been spending most of his free time in Taekwoon's company and he also realizes that even in the times when they're not together, he finds that the strangest things remind him of Taekwoon. He files away frustrating or amusing things that happen during the day to tell him about when they see each other in the evening, he tries to win over Wuffles by acting how he thinks Taekwoon might interact with the dog, he even tries out Taekwoon's disconcerting stare when one of his supervisors calls him in to get him back to Google after he'd closed the browser window. All that last one gets him is a repeated request and some doubtful remarks about whether he knows how to operate a browser either, but the fact remains that Taekwoon is far more frequently on his mind than Minseok had realized or than he's sure he's comfortable with. He remembers the last time they had sparred and how Taekwoon's presence just a little bit too close had made it hard for him to breathe. With him standing that close, Minseok hadn't even seen that it was Junmyeon's body because he'd been too busy gaping at the eyes boring into his. They were Junmyeon's eyes, but Minseok doesn't think that their leader's eyes had ever burned like that when they looked at him before.

As always, when he feels himself getting too close to someone not part of that tight circle he's come to think of as more than his team, Minseok's first reaction is to retreat to a safe distance. "Coffee dates" Lu Han had mentioned, so as soon as he steps off the bus after work he follows Hongbin to the subway rather than making his way to the usual coffee shop. If Hongbin finds this strange, at least he does no more than raise an eyebrow at him. That night Minseok follows Kyungsoo, Sanghyuk, and Hongbin down into the basement where they're still poking away at the information they've gleaned from the gas canisters. And, as it turns out, "they" is actually just Hongbin since neither Kyungsoo nor Sanghyuk have any chemical expertise. Any small tasks that need to be done and any extra hands that Hongbin might need for his research are more than taken care of by the other two, so Minseok kicks his heels idly for several hours with nothing to do. It's too cool to be comfortable down here next to the concrete foundation and Minseok thinks wistfully of the familiar bed upstairs waiting to be lounged on, but up there Taekwoon is probably reading another book or leaning over the arm of his chair to tickle the rabbit's notched ears, so Minseok just scuffs his shoes against the floor sullenly. The next day goes no better, even though he spends the evening watching Jaehwan-who-is-probably-Yixing idly printing and laminating fake ID after fake ID with increasingly ludicrous names and pictures, to the great amusement of Baekhyun and "Wonshik". Minseok spins one of them in his fingers -- an official-looking government ID from the Principality of Sealand with the name 'Ken "The Nose" McSchnoz' and a closeup picture of a pair of nostrils -- until "Wonshik" takes it away from him.

"You're not having fun here," he tells him. "You need to stop stressing yourself out so much or you'll give poor Sehunnie wrinkles." He turns the ID over and bursts out laughing. "Baekhyun, look! This one is genius!" He doesn't notice when Minseok gets up and leaves. Avoiding Taekwoon means that he doesn't have a place to retreat and unload the day's stress. He tries with Lu Han, but Lu Han tries to help by imagining creative ways to kill everyone in the office when they finally break in which doesn't really help. If he would just sit and listen, maybe Minseok wouldn't feel like he's being wound tighter and tighter every minute. He knows he's going to snap soon, but there doesn't seem to be much he can do about it without falling back into that same dangerous closeness that had grown up between him and Taekwoon. Lu Han also notices that he's avoiding Taekwoon and feels the need to talk to Minseok about it, which only makes it worse. Minseok shuts him down as thoroughly as he can and heads off to work one morning feeling grumpier than he can remember being in a long time. Of course, this is the day that everything decides to go wrong. The elevators are out when he arrives, which should have clued him in that he was embarking on a terrible, rotten, no good, very bad day, but he keeps pressing forward down the stairs into what will turn out to be soulcrushing monotony punctuated with brief periods of hectic stress. He's moved into taking down dictation for the first time and makes more mistakes than he thought was actually possible, meaning he has to go back and redraft the same letter five different times before it's ready to go out. Then the copier starts pulling in five pages at once no matter what anyone does to make it feed properly, so Minseok has to stand there and feed pages in one by one. Then he has to stand by while yet another of his supervisors, Hyunsuk, reads his correspondence and memos in painful slow motion and makes disparaging comments about their authors the entire time. 

"Look, I asked for this article and it's not here," he says, waving the memo that Minseok knows is from that friendly girl down in the PR section of the Great Cubicle Sea. "She didn't even look for it. Do you have a pen? We're going to write a response."

Minseok tries to read the piece of paper upside down. "She says she's emailing it to you," he says, trying to sound blank.

"Where?" Minseok points out the line and Hyunsuk's eyebrows pull together just a little bit. He checks his email. "Ah, there it is. I need copies sent to the idiots down on the third floor. Is the copier working yet?"

After that, Wuffles decides to try eating a squirrel during lunch and then flops down in something that might be mud, but which Minseok has a sinking realization doesn't _smell_ like mud. Then he eats half of Minseok's sandwich again. By the time Minseok gets back to the house he's ready to go with whatever plan of cheerful revenge murder Lu Han can come up with. In a moment of weakness, he walks into Taekwoon's bedroom, but he's gone to wait for Jaehwan and Sanghyuk to get off of their janitorial shift, so Minseok tries to tentatively pet the rabbit instead. It bites his finger so Minseok marches back into his own room and punches the literal stuffing out of every pillow he can find before falling over into a pile of feathers and thinking long and hard about drowning himself in the lake. A couple people look in to check on him, but he bites their heads off so thoroughly that they stop coming by. No heist mission can possibly be worth this much outrage, he thinks, not even to get their proper bodies back. He manages to half convince himself that it's Taekwoon's fault for creating this situation and has just settled down to a really good angry simmer when there's a knock on the door connecting the two rooms just before he hears it swing open slowly.

" _What?_ " he snaps. "If this is about your fucking rabbit, I can tell you right now that I am not interested and if you don't keep it away from me, I will wring its fleabitten neck and give it to whoever's cooking dinner. And leave me alone, I don't want to look at you."

There's no response, only silence for a long time. Then Minseok hears the sound of something being carefully put down on the table next to the bed, followed by retreating footsteps. He waits until the door clicks shut before turning over to get a look at whatever it is. Sitting on the bedside table is a paper travel cup of coffee from the coffee shop they've been visiting in the evenings, steam still wafting from the lid. When Minseok takes a sip, he realizes that it has just the right amount of cream and no sugar, exactly the way he prefers it. He feels incredibly guilty. Before he's finished half the cup he knows what he really ought to do and before he finishes the last dregs he's resolved to actually do it. When he opens the connecting door, Taekwoon looks up. He looks surprised.

"I've been a dick," Minseok says. He looks at the floorboards. "I haven't been thinking straight and had a shitty time but then I said some shitty things and I'm sorry. I'm not going to kill your rabbit." Taekwoon doesn't say anything, just stands up and looks at him. Minseok sighs. "And I'm sorry for avoiding you all of a sudden. I just- ... Well, I'm sorry."

Taekwoon smiles then and it's barely even visible but it could be the widest grin in the world and it still couldn't do more to lift Minseok's mood. He smiles back.

"I think this is where Lu Han would say to hug it out," he jokes, but Taekwoon actually opens his arms and it takes Minseok a moment to realize that he's actually offering a hug. Something tells Minseok that it would be a bad idea to accept it, for his sanity's sake, but he also thinks he could really use a hug right now.

_Oh, what the hell,_ Minseok thinks and steps forward into Taekwoon's arms.

It was a bad idea. He immediately realizes that it was a bad idea, about as quickly as he realizes that Taekwoon gives _really nice hugs_. He shows the same tendency to make himself look smaller that Minseok had noticed earlier and since he's in Junmyeon's body it makes him feel about half of Minseok's current size, but he also doesn't hold back. There's no stiff distance or tentative back pats. Taekwoon just wraps his arms around Minseok's middle and closes the space between them. His head is at just the right level to settle against the juncture of Minseok's neck and this is the same breathless feeling that had overtaken Minseok when they had sparred only now Minseok also can hear Lu Han's voice echoing in his head mockingly.

"I told you so," it doesn't quite say, though that's hinted somewhere around the edges, but mostly Minseok hears what Lu Han had told him: "You enjoy being around each other. More than you enjoy being around most other people"

Minseok is having to admit to himself that being around Taekwoon is one of the few good things happening in his life right now. Even in the middle of all the stupid missions and frustration and creaky, loud house with too many equally loud people crammed into it, spending time with Taekwoon is something he actually looks forward to doing now. Even if it weren't an escape from the anarchy that is the rest of the house, he would _still_ want to spend time with Taekwoon and that's where the problem lies. Minseok can accept the fact that he likes Taekwoon, probably more than he's liked just about anyone, and without examining it too closely he can accept that being in close physical proximity with Taekwoon makes him feel lightheaded, dizzy and almost fifteen again in sheer confusion levels. He can wrap his head around all this. Weird as it is, it's no weirder than the fact that he's currently walking around in Oh Sehun's body. But therein lies the real problem. Their current predicament is the only reason they're even associating with each other to begin with and they are currently in the middle of looking for a way to reverse it. The idea is to change everything back to the way it was before, but changing things back also means putting them once again on opposite sides of an ongoing turf struggle. Changing things back means rewinding time back to a point where they were holding guns at each other's heads. Given what they're trying to accomplish, the fact that he likes to hug Taekwoon, that he likes going out for coffee with him, likes the way he smiles more with his eyes than with his mouth... is going to cost him a lot of pain later when all that goes away again. No matter how he thinks this new friendship might be developing, as long as there's a chance they'll end up enemies again when all this is over, Minseok will have to keep all of this to himself.

But, he thinks, that doesn't mean he has to stop hugging Taekwoon now.

Now that he's speaking to Taekwoon again, he doesn't feel quite as murderous about his fake internship as he had before, and is able to better concentrate on forming an accurate map of the facility's upper levels. His intern badge won't get him below a certain point and certainly not anywhere near the storage, manufacturing floor, or the labs. The help he can provide is limited to the route in and out of the building, so he shoves aside any pondering on how they're going to get into a room with the actual chemicals and focuses instead on how they're going to get into the building and through the office levels. That's Minseok's domain, and it's towards that end that he starts schmoozing it up with his bosses and coworkers as much as possible. He takes on extra tasks as an excuse to take peek down more of the winding corridors, and he makes a point of chatting with the receptionist. For what is probably the first time, Minseok thanks god that Sehun's usually disdainful resting face does a complete one-eighty when he makes an effort to smile because it means that it makes more of an impression on the middle aged woman when Minseok stops to lean on the corner of her desk and make some inane comment on the color of her shirt. After spending enough time hanging around during his lunch hour, he gets a peek at the codes she has to enter to open various doors and disable various basic security barriers. Nothing fancy, but enough to get him into the lobby when the time comes. He makes sure to bring her a box of chocolates in the next few days and refuses to leave or stop wheedling her until she bites into one of them, at which point she gushes over how sweet both he and the candies are and pinches his cheek until it's pink. That's just about enough to erase whatever tiny scrap of guilt Minseok might have even possibly felt about hijacking her codes, so he writes them down and hands them over to Junmyeon that night without a qualm. Then he needs a card key to start the elevator once its been shut down or, failing that, a key to the stairwell, and after some thought he decides that the stairs will be easier to access and harder for anyone to cut them off from should they be discovered. That key is easy to discover and Minseok thinks that anyone who keeps keys hanging on an obvious hook in their office is either a movie villain or the village idiot because it takes him less than a day to figure out which one is the key he needs to get them down at least as far as Minseok's own security clearance will get them. Once that's done, all he has to do is coordinate with Jaehwan and Sanghyuk to make sure they've mapped out all the security cameras on those floor and then Minseok's job is done. It's a nice feeling, knowing that the rest of the job is up to someone else.

But because his life apparently cannot be that easy, that's when Lu Han's feathered apparition decides to make one more entrance. Minseok is leaving his room late Saturday morning having just dressed after a shower, when something soars down the hall directly at his head. He has a flashing image in his head of piercing yellow eyes and massive talon and then he's flattened against the wall out of pure instinct. It flies right through the door into his room and starts flapping around the wall between that room and Taekwoon's, scratching loudly at the door which Minseok is suddenly thankful he remembered to close. From inside the room there's a panicked thumping and upon hearing it, the bird renews its efforts to get through to it. When Minseok grabs one of the wooden chairs and brandishes it, though, the bird screeches and just barely manages to make it back out into the hall without hitting its wings against either side of the door frame. It flies across into Lu Han's room and straight out the window. Lu Han comes barreling out a second later, hair sticking up every which way.

"You saw it this time?" he demands, and punches the air when Minseok nods. "I told you I wasn't making it up! It's vicious! It's huge and it's trying to kill people!"

"I don't think it's _people_ that it wants to kill," says Minseok as the door to Taekwoon's room opens a crack.

"What's going on?" Taekwoon asks.

"An owl," says Minseok. "I thought it might have been an owl that's trying to set up nest in the house somewhere, but I just saw it. I think it hears the rabbit."

Taekwoon's face goes hard. "Can we get it out of the house?" he asks. 

"I think it left-" Minseok starts to say, but just then there's a thud like the front door hitting the wall behind it and the subsequent loud yells let Minseok know that the owl must have reentered the house downstairs. "I'll get the broom," he sighs.

The problem with hunting the owl is that even once they get everyone in on the endeavor since it seems to possess the uncanny ability to disappear in a house full of people only to reappear and divebomb one of them when they round a corner too fast. As a result, nerves soon begin to fray, accompanied by a growing sense of paranoia and dread the longer the bird goes uncaught. Taekwoon returns to the bedroom to guard the rabbit in case the owl somehow manages to get through one of the windows or doors, and Minseok prowls the upstairs hall with his makeshift club from before slung across his shoulder. There's a yell from one of the back rooms and Minseok charges forward but by the time he gets there all he sees is Zitao crouched by a dresser and clutching his chest.

"It went over that way," he gasps, waving at the trapdoor up into the attic. Minseok sends him to go help Kyungsoo board up more of the windows and then faces down the trapdoor.

The door doesn't look as if anything has disturbed it recently, but Minseok has learned by now, after several hours of hunting, not to underestimate this bird. If it doesn't look like it could possibly be in a place, that's probably exactly where it is. There's no reaction when he pushes the door out of the way, so he sets his club down on the floor and prepares to climb up the rest of the way. This proves to be a mistake when something hits him hard in the back of the head, throwing him forward into the lip of the trapdoor. Through the daze and the tears of pain in his eyes, Minseok sees the massive owl with its feathers all puffed up angrily as it prepares to attack again. He tries to fend it off, but he can't see well enough to find his club. In the middle of his flailing, his foot slips and suddenly he's falling backwards, hitting his head and back again on the stairs as he rolls down to land on the bedroom floor below. He feels like he can't move, but that's when the door from the hall flies open and then Taekwoon is there, looking slightly breathless. He takes in the sight of Minseok lying stunned on the floor and then he's gone again, disappearing up the trapdoor, and Minseok can only hear the sounds of screeching and hooting until suddenly they cut off. Several of the others have come to see what the racket is by now. Junmyeon is holding a wet cloth to a cut on the side of Minseok's head when Taekwoon finally comes back down the attic stairs.

"Where's the owl?" Minseok asks. He winces.

"I hit it," Taekwoon says shortly. "It bounced off the wall and I did not see it move again."

"Did you just kill a giant angry owl with your bare hands?" Lu Han sounds impressed.

Taekwoon's frown deepens. "I had a stick," he says.

"He had a stick," Lu Han repeats. "I take it back, Minseok. I approve."

Minseok is not ready to have another of these discussions with Lu Han. No matter how much he's coming to terms with how Taekwoon has been making him feel, he is not prepared to discuss it with a friend whose idea of support is to smirk and offer to get everyone else out of the house for a while. He just got viciously mauled by a bird of prey and honestly he has enough of a headache right now without adding Lu Han to that.

"I don't think you got cut up too bad," says Junmyeon, "but you're going to be bruised for a while. And I'm not sure you didn't hit your head, so we'll need to watch that."

Sehun punches Lu Han hard in the back.

"What was that for?" Lu Han howls.

"He's knocking my body around and I want him to feel it when he gets his own back," Sehun glares. He punches Lu Han again in the arm.

They get Minseok back down the hall and into Taekwoon's room where the door has been left hanging open. Luckily the rabbit is still inside, cowering under the armchair like it's still afraid it's about to become an owl's dinner at any moment. Taekwoon ignores it and makes Minseok lie down before he even tries to fish it out. He gives up after a few unsuccessful tries and just sits on the floor next to the bed. Only the top of his head is visible from where Minseok lies, so he can't see his face or make out any indication of what he's thinking.

"I thought you were going to guard the rabbit," Minseok says finally. "You seemed more concerned about making sure it didn't get eaten than you did about catching the owl."

Taekwoon shrugs. "I heard you fall," he says.

Minseok doesn't know why it feels particularly important that apparently his safety is more important than a rabbit's, but it still makes his heart speed up a little. Maybe because he's watched Taekwoon spend evening after evening changing this rabbit's bandages, checking on its wounds and making sure it got enough to eat and drink, painstakingly feeding it when it looked like it couldn't do that itself. And Taekwoon had not only abandoned it to come check on Minseok, he had left in such a hurry that he didn't even bother to make sure the room was secure from an owl that was actively looking for said rabbit. His thoughts are interrupted when the bed dips slightly and then Taekwoon is sitting there next to him, studying the bruise right at Minseok's temple, fingers just lightly brushing his hairline. His eyes are looking around and Minseok can tell he's checking him over, taking stock of all his cuts and bruises. He could stop him. He probably _should_ stop him, but wherever he touches seems to hurt a little less, or maybe what hurt is there gets overridden by the comfort of Taekwoon's gentle movements. Then he brushes one particularly tender cut and Minseok can't keep from wincing. Immediately Taekwoon mumbles an apology and makes as if to pull back, but Minseok stops him.

"No," he says quickly and Taekwoon freezes. "No, it's... it's okay. I don't mind."

Taekwoon's hand, stilled for a moment on the side of his face, brushes Minseok's cheek again. His thumb rubs against his cheekbone but Taekwoon isn't looking at his injuries anymore. He's looking right into Minseok's eyes and his face drifts a little closer almost without him realizing it. Minseok feels so content that it takes him several seconds to come to his senses and at that point their lips are about an inch apart. The sudden awareness makes him jump and jerk his head away. Taekwoon shoots upright again, looking shocked and then guilty. 

He starts to stand up from the bed. "Sorry," he says jerkily. "I'm sorry, I-"

Minseok's hand shoots out to grab Taekwoon's arm, keeping him from retreating all the way. "Wait." It's hard to explain when Minseok is only half certain of what just happened, let alone what he wanted to happen, but Taekwoon looks deeply upset and Minseok knows it's mostly at himself. "I didn't mean to- uh. It's just that... I just remembered whose body I'm in. And you're looking like someone I'm used to taking harebrained orders from so... I just didn't think it was exactly the right thing to do."

Several expressions flicker across Taekwoon's face -- confusion, and then relief which is quickly followed up with distaste. "I hadn't thought about that," he says. Then he admits, "I didn't think much at all."

"Neither did I," agrees Minseok, "but it's... you know, neither the time nor the place, I guess."

"That suggests there _is_ a time and a place for it," Taekwoon says very quietly, and while he lets Minseok pull him back down to sit on the bed, he doesn't look back over.

"That's..." Minseok sighs. "The thing is, we're on the wrong sides. I know-" he keeps going because he can tell Taekwoon would like to argue "-we're on the same side right now, but that's because we all have one thing we want and we can't get it without working together. What about when we get it? When we get back into our proper bodies, we're replacing one problem with another. We'll be back to being enemies."

Taekwoon does look at him then. His eyes are serious. "Do you think that?" he asks. "Do you think we'll go back to being enemies? Because I won't be yours."

Every fiber of Minseok's being would like to take that at face value. He would like to believe that even once everything is sorted out and the two groups are back to the way they were before, the comfortable friendship won't unravel completely. He wants to believe that they won't be flung back into a conflict between their two gangs, forced to choose between each other and their old friends. He would like to believe all this, but Minseok hasn't gotten as far as this by believing what he _wants_ to be true. Taekwoon can probably see the struggle on his face because he takes Minseok's hand and laces their fingers together, leaving them lying on the bed between them.

"We'll deal with the future when it comes," he says. "For now, we have a goal to work towards. And we have this." He looks down at their hands. Minseok sighs.

_For how long?_ he thinks.

The final go-ahead comes in the middle of the next week when Hongbin comes back grinning ear to ear and bearing the news that he's just gotten basic security clearance to access the labs themselves. It's been a tossup up until now as to whether they'll try to take an entire shipment's worth out of storage, eventually selling the stuff they don't use along with the original chemicals, or if they'll snatch just enough to change them back from the lab where they're working on refining it. Hongbin's new security pass means that they now have nearly everything they need to get into the lab. It's just in time too, because their month-long window is almost up now. The problem with breaking into the lab as opposed to the storage facilities is that they'll be lucky enough to get enough to dose all of them one time. If there's something wrong with it or if it doesn't get them all back to their original bodies, they'll be short on luck, but on the other hand the odds of them getting access to the larger stores before it's too late are very slim. They either have this one chance or risk never making it at all.

When it's phrased like that, any objections anyone might have melt away fairly quickly and they all settle down to bring together the final few elements in their plan. They have to make sure they have a way to open all the doors between them and the labs and they have to get everyone into the room for the switch. They've nearly unanimously decided that if they have a chance of pulling it off, then they make the switch as soon as they get the chemical. That way if they're interrupted on the way out, at least some of them have a good chance of getting away in their proper bodies without having to worry about keeping the chemical safe. The day is set for three days from that moment. Three days and they'll know one way or another if they're ever getting back to normal.

The last few steps of their preparation go off without a hitch. Kyungsoo, dressed up in Baekhyun's body and an expensively tailored suit, sweeps in and dazzles everyone he meets into giving him a comprehensive tour, during which he picks up and pockets various items that the others pass him. He passes them along to a waiting Yixing during the lunch hour, who takes whatever notes and scans he needs to duplicate them, and then Kyungsoo has them all back in place by the end of the day. Back at the house, Baekhyun jokingly tries to take half the credit for their so-far brilliant success, on the grounds that it was his body that let Kyungsoo get everything they needed so easily. In response, Kyungsoo disappears until quite late and no one quite knows where he's gone. It's definitely past midnight when one of the vans crunches back up the driveway, but even then no one can get a definite answer out of Kyungsoo about where he's been. All he will say is "I wanted to get a tattoo" which on its own is enough to send Baekhyun into a nervous meltdown, made all the worse by the fact that _none of them can tell where it is or what it's of_. 

By the time the night of the raid comes along, many of them are as tightly wound as Baekhyun, though for different reasons. Junmyeon has them go over and over the plans, Yifan drills them on their individual roles, and  Hakyeon sends them through practice runs of what they anticipate having to do. Everyone is running nonstop from sunrise to sunset to be ready for whatever that night will throw at them. Before they pull away from the house for what they hope is the last time in these bodies, Taekwoon lays out fresh food and water for the rabbit and, now that it's well enough to hop away, he leaves all the doors open for it to escape should it so choose. It might seem pessimistic, as if he doesn't expect to return to care for it, but Minseok thinks it's more out of a desire to give it the same freedom and fresh start that they're heading towards. 

When they pull up to the factory complex, Minseok edges his way around to a side door hidden in the glass windows of the lobby, leading the others in careful single file behind him. The door slides open with the passcode Minseok stole from the receptionist. Once they're inside, Minseok guides them into the areas where they'll be hidden from the security cameras by the massive plants, timing their movements with the sweep of the scanners to avoid them being detected. He thinks he hears "Wonshik" making dinosaur noises but those are swiftly hushed by the others before the security systems can pick them up. A few taps at the receptionist's console disables most of the surface security, after which a quick turn of the key is all they need to get them into the side stairwell. From there, Minseok is able to guide them to his daily corporate hell. Jaehwan uses Zitao's arm and back strength to hoist Sanghyuk up so that he can slide a black bag over the nearest security camera. They'll know sooner or later that someone has broken in, but their goal during this mission is to keep their identities from being recorded and used as proof. There are still motion sensors that sweep the room periodically in patterns that Minseok has learned to anticipate. He's spent entire days going about his regular office tasks, trying to avoid setting them off while making it look completely natural. At this point he thinks he could probably do it with his eyes closed. Guiding the others is a little bit more difficult, especially when he can't make a noise, but as long as they take it slow they evade the sensors fairly well. As they go along, Jaehwan and Sanghyuk cover up every camera they encounter.

Once they make it through the offices, that's where Hongbin's knowledge takes over. Minseok only ever was allowed into the business offices, but Hongbin's chemical expertise meant that they moved him up to actual lab work fairly quickly. It's the same slow going here, only this time in addition to the sweeping sensors, there are stationary laser sensors at various heights around the hallways, making the entire place look like something out of an action movie. They're far harder to see than the lasers always tend to be in movies, though, so Hongbin ends up making everyone wait perfectly still at one end while he guides each individual member of the group through the obstacle course of sensors one at a time. Minseok thinks it would be hard even in his proper body, but the added length in each of his limbs means he has to watch each individual movement to keep from overreaching. At least one time when Hongbin signaled him to freeze, eyes watching the moving sensors intently, Minseok is left standing on one leg with his other knee tucked up into his chest and his head ducked down next to it. The tiniest waver starts to take over his little toe and he feels sick with the concentration needed to remain upright and perfectly still. Sweat is pouring down his neck when he finally uncurls, his body shaking with the exertion. By the time he gets to the other side all he wants to do is collapse right there to the floor, but then Hongbin scans the pass card and the door opens with a faint whir. Past it is another hallway with the same setup and Minseok swears he's going to scream, he's going to give up right there, fall over and doom them all- 

-but then a hand brushes his and Taekwoon is right there. He doesn't need to look at Minseok; the message is still there anyway: "I'm here." Minseok takes a few minutes to breathe, in through his nose and out through his mouth, until his resolve returns. The next hallway is barely any easier, but he knows exactly how hard it will be going in this time so it makes it feel less complicated. As long as he thinks of it as a strenuous training exercise, back down in the gym at the lake house, he can get through the entire thing without getting bogged down in his own thoughts. One foot in front of the other, first one leg up then an arm tucked in, and the whole while Taekwoon's eyes watching him keep him grounded. When that's all he has to think about, the hallway no longer feels like it's a mile long. 

The last barrier between them and the lab containing their goal is a door with a passcode and card swipe access. Hongbin enters the code and then it's the moment of truth. Yixing should have modified his company badge to extend his access hours, but if that hasn't taken for some reason or if the system rejects it, then the alarms will go off and they'll have to abandon their only chance at getting their bodies back. He swipes the card and Minseok can tell they're all holding their breaths. The red light holds for a moment and then flashes green. With a turn of the handle, they're in. Once inside, Hongbin can turn off all the lab's individual security systems, which frees them up a little. They find spots to sit, either on benches or on counters or the floor, while Hongbin rummages through the refrigerated storage lockers to find everything they need.

"This should be it," he says, holding up a beaker with a silvery liquid inside.

"What are we supposed to do, drink it?" Jongin asks.

"You'd overdose," Hongbin tells him. He fiddles with a few knobs and dials on the counter until a flame appears. "Luckily, we can evaporate it with this and that should disperse the chemical throughout the air in a gas, the way we encountered it the first time. There's a proper way to do it, but we don't really have time to set that up." He turns to Baekhyun at his elbow and hands him a pair of plastic goggles. "Here, put these on. Lab rules."

"Sure," Baekhyun rolls his eyes, "have us inhale untested experimental chemicals, but better make sure we're wearing goggles." But he puts them on anyway.

As soon as everyone has the goggles in place, Hongbin lowers the beaker onto the flame and waves them all closer. "You'll all want to be fairly close. I don't know how much you have to inhale to trigger the reaction, but we can't afford to waste any of it." They all stand in a circle, staring at the beaker where tiny bubbles are starting to form as it heats up. Hongbin reaches over to take Sanghyuk's hand. "You've done a good job taking care of me so far," he says with a smile. "I hope I can get you back where you belong."

"It'll be nice to see you someplace that's not a mirror," Sanghyuk shrugs. He moves in closer so that his side is pressed against Hongbin's. "We couldn't have done it without you, you know."

There's a thin plume just starting to rise from the beaker now. Taekwoon apparently decides to take a page out of Sanghyuk and Hongbin's book because then he's right next to Minseok, wrapping their fingers together and resting his head against the side of Minseok's shoulder. The liquid is bubbling in earnest now, spilling silvery gas over its sides which pours over the countertop and onto the floor. Minseok remembers it looking heavy before, so he tugs down on Taekwoon's sleeve, indicating that they should sit down. When they settle on the floor, he puts his other hand on top of Taekwoon's. The fog is lapping at his waist now, tingling wherever it touches.

"See you on the other side," he says. He instantly regrets such a corny line, but Taekwoon lifts his free hand to rest it against Minseok's cheek, his eyes smiling. Then the fog rises over Minseok's face and he breathes in.

Right away it's the same cool tingling spreading throughout his body, only this time it's welcome because it means that he's about to be pulled out of a body that's not his own, suspended in midair until, with any luck, he finds his way back to his own form. Minseok is so ready to be himself again. For the moment though he is once again an ink blot of thought drifting in a sea of silver gray fog. He spreads out and melts into it while flashes of images from the last month wave around him like scarves and trails of meaning. He is a fragmented version of himself reliving fragmented snatches of memory, scenes of days in this very building bleeding into nights spent lying on a bed and watching the leaves turn gold and red in the light, like an echo of an autumn to come trapped in the span of a sunset. Most of all he sees Taekwoon. The images are so blurry now that he can't see Taekwoon trapped in Junmyeon's body, his own self only peeking around the edges and seeping through the cracks around his eyes. The Taekwoon he sees in the fog looks more like every hidden smile and quiet stare, more like everything Minseok has come to recognize as _Taekwoon_. 

Then he feels that hook pulling him back, that siphon that drains him back out of the fog and into a solid shape again. For a moment he's afraid that something has gone wrong and that he's wound up in yet another body that's not his own, but then he realizes that he's become unaccustomed to being in his own shape. When he stretches out he can find the familiar contours of his own brain and body, but they feel like they fit him differently. Like he's grown out in different ways or like Lu Han's presence has stretched his body out like a borrowed pair of clothes. He'd like to open windows and air out the metaphorical rooms of this house after his long vacation only it's not a house, it's his body, and there is no metaphor to actually convey what it feels like to be back in it. He opens his eyes.

The first thing he hears is alarms screaming.

The second thing he notices is the water landing on his face, pouring out of the overhead sprinklers. All around him, the others are sitting up as quickly as they can, staggering upright using the tables and counters as supports.

"Oh my god!" Baekhyun exclaims in anguished tones. "Who am I _now_?"

Minseok's heart nearly stops. He looks around to see identical looks of horror around him.

"You're not Baekhyun?" Junmyeon says, his face going white.

"Nah, I'm just shitting you. I'm Baekhyun. Ow!" He rubs his head where Kyungsoo slammed an elbow into it.

"What's that awful noise?" Zitao asks. Both his hands are over his ears.

"I think these rooms must have a detection system for gases and various other chemicals in the air," says... Hongbin. That's Hongbin. Minseok has gotten used to thinking of that face as Sanghyuk, but no, that's Sanghyuk next to him. "Then the burner was left unattended too long and set off the fire alert. I didn't expect the chemical to incapacitate us for so long." He looks frustrated and remorseful.

"It's not your fault," Sanghyuk is quick to assure him. "It's hard to say how long we were out, right? And at least we're back to being ourselves again."

"That's true." Hongbin smiles over at him, the dimple at the corner of his mouth just peeking out.

"Listen, not to hustle you guys too much," Yixing says, "but I'm pretty sure we've got cops and guards on the way now. We might want to book it."

"Hang on just a second," says Baekhyun. He fumbles with his belt buckle. "I've got to check for tattoos."

"You can do that when we're not about to get thrown in jail for the rest of our lives!" Yifan shoves him forward. "We're leaving _now_."

They're all fully armed thanks to Kyungsoo, so they look something like a walking armory when they round the corner out of the lab. Just outside they run into the first security guard, clearly one of the ones already on patrol in the building when the alarms started going off. Before he can even shout, Wonshik drops him with a bullet to the head.

"We have to keep going!" Junmyeon shoves them forward until they're in an all-out sprint down the hall.

It's at the stairs up into the office levels that they encounter the first squad of police, all in helmets and riot shields. They're going so fast that they nearly run into the cops, scattering at the last minute to avoid the guns pointed right at them. Minseok's forward momentum nearly pitches him out into the open anyway, but then someone's hand closes around his arm and yanks him to the side. He finds himself flat against someone's chest, half crushed against the wall, and when he looks up it's Taekwoon he sees there. The real Taekwoon, back in his right body. 

"Are you alright?" he asks and his voice is higher than Minseok is used to hearing it, but it's every bit as quiet and controlled. 

"You're very tall," is all Minseok can think to say.

Taekwoon's mouth twitches. It's a very familiar look. "I hadn't noticed," he says.

A volley of bullets from behind the wall makes Minseok forget whatever he'd been about to say. Whatever it was, it could wait until they got out of here. It's quite clear they're not going to make it up that staircase, so they double back around to find another way up onto the main floor. All of the elevators have been shut down and after two seconds looking at the controls Chanyeol says he could figure it out enough to get them moving, but only with the right tools and about fifteen minutes to do it in.

"So basically, you _can't_ do it," Sehun shoots over his shoulder while he shoots at movement ahead. "Stop getting our hopes up with no point."

"We're not going to get up any of these elevators, and they'll have blocked off all the staircases too while they send down more goons," Hakyeon says, fitting a new cartridge into his pistol with a snap. "Are we out of ideas yet?"

"Who here can kick open a door?" Lu Han asks suddenly. Wonshik, Taekwoon, Chanyeol, and Zitao raise their hands. Lu Han nods. "Follow me."

He leads them back down one of the hallways, counting doors as he goes, until they arrive at a blank gray door that looks something like an electrical closet. It takes several tries, but they manage to break the door off its hinges. Behind it is a long, dark staircase descending down.

"This is great," says Junmyeon, "but we need to go _up_."

"Oh, ye of little faith," Lu Han crosses his arms. "You put me in the mail room for a reason. There are service stairways like this all over that connect to the basement sorting floor down here, and if we're lucky one of them can get us up to the mail control room where there is a _big garage door_ and _trucks to break it down with_."

"It'll mean leaving our vans behind," Jongdae points out. "And all the evidence in them that could lead them back to us."

"What evidence?" Lu Han retorts. "We cleared out everything in those vans before we set out because we're not _idiots_. There are no plates, no registration papers, no serial numbers anywhere, they've been wiped down... those vans are as clean as they're gonna get without the judicial application of fire."

"We don't have time to argue it," Yifan says. "Better to leave evidence behind than bodies, which is what will happen if we don't get moving."

The stairs take them down into a wide open area, largely unfurnished apart from huge tables arranged in rows, but with doors spaced periodically along it like the one they came down out of. Lu Han takes them all the way to one end where the mail chute comes out, emptying into a huge shallow bin, something like a dumpster cut in half. Next to it is another staircase leading up to a door marked "MAIL".

"This is it," says Lu Han. "If we can get in here, we have a good shot at getting out."

"I can't kick this door down," Wonshik says, eying it. "The hinges are on the wrong side and i can't get any leverage from these stairs."

"Well, that's it," Lu Han flings up his hands. "We're just dead then. I'm out of ideas."

An idea occurs to Minseok. "What about the mail chute?" he asks. They all turn to look at him. "Someone could climb up the mail chute and try to kick open the door from up there, where it's easier."

"That could work," Chanyeol nods. "But only if one of us can actually get up there."

They take turns trying to scale the chute with varying degrees of failure. Changyeol can barely get a grip on the smooth metal surface at all and Wonshik only gets slightly further before he too slips back down. Zitao can get to the halfway point, but that's where he gets stuck. He can stay wedged up there comfortably but he can't pull himself up any further. Minseok ponders how to get him up the rest of the way for a while, but it's Sanghyuk who speaks up first.

"What if you climb up there, then?" He looks at Taekwoon. "He's got a really good grip where he is, right? If you can get up to that point, maybe he can boost you up the rest of the way."

Taekwoon looks over at Minseok before nodding once. Zitao had found that even their sneakers don't work as well as bare feet, so Taekwoon unlaces his and slides them off his feet, stuffing his socks inside before handing them to Minseok. Minseok tries to give his hand an encouraging squeeze, but his hands are a little too full of shoes to be able to do much. He hangs at the end of the chute to watch until Taekwoon disappears into the gloom. Even then, he listens for each dull metallic thump that means he's another foothold higher. He bites his lip every time it sounds like Taekwoon is slipping, but finally he can hear Zitao's voice calling down.

"You're almost here!" Zitao is saying. "Reach up a little further and I'll be able to grab you."

The sounds of struggling filter down the chute along with more thuds and bangs, but finally Minseok hears Zitao's triumphant exclamation.

"Got it!" he says. "Here, try to get your foot up- augh, no, not there! A little- yeah, you got it. Brace up against the wall here... okay, now you're past. Go on ahead. It gets a little steeper but not too much. Yell if you start to slip."

The sounds drop off then, no matter how closely Minseok listens. There's vague shuffles and thumps but he has no idea what's going on. Then even those sounds fade away and there's only a faint metallic ringing in the silence. Then he hears gunshots. Hakyeon gasps somewhere close behind him, but Minseok is already dropping down to rip off his own shoes as fast as he can. 

"What are you doing?" Lu Han demands.

"I'm going to help him," Minseok says fiercely. "And don't even fucking _think_ of trying to stop me."

Lu Han studies his face for less than a second before nodding. "You might want a boost," he says. "Come on."

Zitao is surprised to see him up there, but hoists him further up the mail chute anyway. "I don't know what's going on up there," he frets. "He disappeared out the other end and I didn't hear anything until someone started shooting."

"I'm going to find out what's going on," says Minseok darkly. "And probably do some more shooting."

He scrambles up the rest of the way on pure adrenaline, hauling himself over the lip with one hand while pulling out his gun with the other. The moment his head clears the top he sees Taekwoon crouched behind a half countertop and window. Next to him, an open doorway leads out into a loading dock where there are several police gunmen all aiming into the mail room. At the sound of Minseok's first shot, Taekwoon whirls around in surprise but the first gunman drops to the ground and Minseok is stalking forward emptying round after round into the garage. He doesn't even wince when several answering bullets whiz past his face. He barely even notices them except to fire into the space between two trucks until he hears a pained, cut off gurgle. When the first gun runs out of ammo, he flings it to the side while he pulls out a spare without missing a beat. Taekwoon has emerged from the mail room to help him, and with the two of them working together they soon empty out the room of opposition. 

Minseok's arm drops and he turns to rip into Taekwoon about what on earth he thought he was doing opening that garage door without backup, but before he can do more than open his mouth he sees a figure stumble to its feet right behind Taekwoon. One of the men Minseok had shot first had only been wounded, and while he's lost his gun, his hand comes up and in it Minseok sees the glint of metal. His feet move without conscious input from his brain, closing the distance in a split second. He slides in close to the man, knocking his hand away smoothly like it's nothing more deadly than a punch being thrown at him in training. _Was that close enough?_ he thinks, and then the muzzle of his gun pushes up under the man's chin and he pulls the trigger.

This time when he turns around, he's too tired to say anything. Taekwoon is staring at him like he's seen a ghost. His mouth is slightly open in surprise and there are probably better things for Minseok to be thinking about right now but _fuck_ that was close and all Minseok wants to do now is seal it with his own because the high buzz of a gunfight is still singing in his veins and they're both alive and they're both _them_ again.

When Taekwoon kisses him, Minseok tastes blood. It's all over his face and it's not his own but Taekwoon doesn't seem to mind so Minseok doesn't mind either. As always Taekwoon is trying to make himself appear smaller, curling in on himself and around Minseok. When Minseok wraps a hand around the back of his neck, Taekwoon's hands twitch on his back just a little, and when Minseok tugs his lower lip between his teeth, Taekwoon's fingers grip at Minseok's shirt and if it could be more perfect Minseok doesn't know how.

"Just had to be a fucking hero, didn't you?" Minseok gumbles into his mouth. 

"Not the one who climbed out of a mail chute already firing," gasps Taekwoon. "Wouldn't call _me_ the hero."

"Don't argue when I'm kissing you," says Minseok, though his heart stutters at the implication that he's a hero to this man. He proceeds to effectively shut him up for another few seconds. "Crap," he pulls away suddenly. Taekwoon makes a noise, moving forward as if trying to catch Minseok's lips again, but Minseok holds him still. "The door," he says emphatically. "The other guys are still down there."

Taekwoon's eyes instantly snap back into focus and he straightens, composure returning so quickly that Minseok could have thought he'd imagined the whole thing. Only Taekwoon's lips are still red and shining and Minseok's own mouth is tingling as they hurry back to the door leading down to the sorting floor. Taekwoon sizes it up and lunges forward, foot hitting the wood right next to the door knob. Minseok has to grab his arms to keep him from tumbling down the stairs after the door, but then the others are looking up at them in various states of panic, surprise, and fear. They're standing with their backs to the stairs, and the reason becomes apparent when Minseok sees the tables moved and piled in front of all the doors along the walls. A loud banging is coming from most of them, several actually shaking on their hinges.

"About damn time," Kyungsoo snarls. "Glad you decided to join us. Can we leave now?" 

He pushes past Minseok and Taekwoon, and the others file up the stairs as quickly as possible. Lu Han is the last to come through the door, and he stops to put a hand on Minseok's shoulder.

"Glad you finally figured out your relationship issues," he says, "but there are way better times to swap spit. I'm just saying, we're kind of on a deadline."

Then he's gone, following the rest of the gang to pile into whatever vehicles they can get Kyungsoo to hotwire. Taekwoon's ears are red, but he looks largely unapologetic as he shrugs at Minseok. At that point, there's nothing for Minseok to do then but drag him off to find a spot in one of the trucks and pray desperately that Lu Han doesn't catcall too loudly. It's a testament to Kyungsoo's hotwiring skills that they have two trucks up and running before the greater assembled police force have time to figure out that that's where they're making a break from. As a result, they smash through the chain link face before more than one or two officers have time to fire a shot off at them. It's also a testament to Jongdae and Jaehwan's driving skills that they manage to lose whatever tails they pick up within half an hour of crazed circling and weaving. They rattle back up the dirt and gravel paths to the lake house at something approaching fifty miles an hour and the air is full of their whoops and cheers, tossed back and forth between the cars like bouncing balls before echoing off the trees around them. With all the windows down, the cool wind whips through Minseok's hair. He's sweaty, sore, battered, covered in blood, and yet... happier than he's been in months. This could be because the strange nightmare that his life had become, something straight from the sci-fi channel, is finally over. Or it could be because Wonshik is laughing loudly, clapping Kyungsoo on the shoulder in congratulations while Hakyeon and Junmyeon look on with near-identical grins. It could be because Jongdae is yelling loudly from the front seat something about running Jaehwan off the road if he tries to pass him again and getting hysterical laughter and engine revving from the truck on their tail. Minseok thinks it has a great deal to do with the shoulder he's resting his head on and the hands working to rub out some of the knots already forming in his shoulders, something to do with the lips that brush the corner of his eye when Taekwoon bends to murmur in his ear. 

 

When they pull into the driveway, tumbling through the door in an excited, shouting crowd, it takes the leaders some time to make themselves heard. When some order has been restored, Junmyeon speaks quickly and urgently.

"We did what we set out to do tonight," he says, "and we did it without anyone getting hurt, which is nothing short of a miracle." Taekwoon's hand tightens around Minseok's and he has to bite back a giddy smile. Junmyeon is still speaking. "Unfortunately, the police were alerted to our presence, so you know they won't be giving up the search that easily. This was a very high-profile company we infiltrated, so there will be a lot of pressure to bag some arrests in the next few weeks. As long as there is any chance this break-in can be definitively traced back to us, this city is not a safe place for us to be."

A ripple of tension runs through the room.

"So, you're telling us to skip town," says Jaehwan.

"We can't stay here," Junmyeon repeats. "And we can't leave as a group either. Eighteen people leaving at once will be too obvious. We need to split up as much as we can, scatter as far as we can, and wait until everything dies down."

"He's right," Hakyeon nods. "It'll be hard to stay in touch at first, but I know how to contact you if I really need to. When the time is right, we'll come back together. In the meantime, we'll need to disappear as thoroughly as possible, taking all those crates downstairs with us."

This is it. This is the moment of truth, Minseok thinks. This is where it will become clear whether or not the two groups will turn on each other, dissolve into the factions from before fighting over this prize.

"I've been thinking about that," says Yifan. "We'll all be coming back to the city when the time is right. With the amount of time we'll be gone, we may find that others have tried to take our places. Since we've already proved that we can accomplish more together, it would be in our best interests to work together against what will certainly be a common enemy in the future."

"In the meantime, we can divide up the materials downstairs, so that no one can say they're being cheated," Junmyeon says. "They won't be safe to sell for a good long while yet, but we're more than ready to give you... say, a third? In the interests of a future partnership."

Hakyeon thinks about it for a moment. "A third sounds fair," he says slowly. "And I wouldn't be against working together more in the future." His face breaks into a smile. "Like I said when we first ran into you that night, we got to where we were by following your lead. Think of how much father we can go if you're not trying to shoot us at the same time."

"Does this mean we have to come up with a new name?" Chanyeol wonders.

"VIXXO," says Baekhyun promptly, only to be kicked in the shin by Kyungsoo.

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Kyungsoo grouses. "No one asked you. And don't you have a tattoo to find anyway?"

Before Baekhyun beats a hasty retreat to the bathroom, they drag him over along with everyone else to the electric safe where they each enter the individual digits they programed in when their residence here began. It seems so long ago that Minseok is surprised to actually find a charge still on his phone. Everyone goes about sorting through their belongings, pocketing wallets and holding up phones to check a month's worth of back messages. There's an anguished cry from the bathroom and Kyungsoo looks actually pleased for the first time since this began.

"Ah, I see he found it," he says. "I'll just hold onto his things until he finishes crying in the bathtub, shall I?"

 

While all the crates are being reloaded into the two trucks -- one for Hakyeon to drive away and the other for Junmyeon -- Minseok follows Taekwoon upstairs into the hall to gather up what few things they've left scattered between their two rooms. When they walk into the bedroom though, the first thing Taekwoon does is to look around for any sign of the rabbit. There's no sound of paws on the wooden floor, no bundle of fur curled up in any of its usual napping places. The door swings open into what would appear to be a completely empty room. While this was his plan to give the rabbit a new beginning, Minseok thinks that Taekwoon is disappointed to see it  actually gone, as if his care and attention would be enough to win over the wild animal and keep it here waiting for his return. He doesn't say anything, but he doesn't have to for Minseok to know that that's what he's feeling. There's nothing Minseok can really say to that. He walks over to the armchair near the window. The last book Taekwoon had started reading is still sitting there facedown over the arm. "The Outward Bound," he can just make out on the spine. When he flips through it, it's a book of first aid. He sets it down and taps the cover thoughtfully.

"So we have to leave town as soon as we can," says Minseok. He gets only a nod from Taekwoon, who is taciturn again now that they're up here. "Were you planning to leave by yourself?" A shrug this time. Minseok tries again. "Would you mind if I came with you?"

Taekwoon doesn't look up from the pile of sheets on the floor, but at least his shoulders relax a little. "I wouldn't mind," he says quietly.

"Do you know where to go?" 

Taekwoon shakes his head at that and Minseok thinks he understands some of the reluctant confusion he sees there. The exhilaration from their successful mission has faded a little, dimmed by the sudden need to form practical plans. They solve one problem only to be sent running from another that promises to chase them for months, if not years, of their lives to come. In terms of intimidation level, it ranks above being hunted by Lu Han's death owl and somewhere below realizing for the first time he'd like to kiss Taekwoon breathless and drink up every sound he makes like sweet wine until they're both drunk on it. The thought only makes him smile now, but it doesn't bring them any closer to knowing where they ought to go.

Minseok looks out the window. There, in the grass of the yard, he sees a rabbit with notched ears. He watches it cross the clearing cautiously but quickly. It limps a little as it moves, as if favoring a mostly-healed injury. It sits up at the edge of the treeline, head raised and looking around, chewing a bit of leaf; it sniffs the air; it looks back at the house for the briefest of moments. Then, with a flash of white tail and kicking legs, it vanishes into the trees for good. Minseok turns away, back into the room. Taekwoon still stands next to the abandoned nest, turning over a piece of hay in his fingers, like it holds the answers. Minseok thinks maybe it does.

He crosses the few steps between them, covering the hand holding the hay with his own, and tugs Taekwoon down by the back of the neck to press a kiss to his lips.

"Hey," he says, "do you want to go live in the forest?"

Taekwoon looks confused for a moment, then his eyes follow Minseok's to the bookshelf and he laughs, a small puff of air against Minseok's mouth.

"If you like," he says.

"It'll be like a vacation," says Minseok. "We'll have lots of work to do when we get back. You know some upstart gang of kids will try to move in on our turf. We'll have some fighting to do when we get back."

"I look forward to it," Taekwoon smiles.

They watch the others split off in ones or twos or threes, each heading off to their own corner of the world to disappears and wait until the heat dies down, until it's safe to come back and take their place again as the ruling crime lords of the city.

_And,_ Minseok thinks as he follows Taekwoon, riding the bus into the sunset for parts unknown, _when that day finally comes, we'll do it together._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you as always to Lucy and Tucker for letting me scream at them and lie on the floor crying. Thanks to Karis for several of the gags and to Rina for being my illegal beta and supplier of plot.
> 
> This fic would not be possible without copious amounts of Block B, FEMM, and Sucker Punch soundtrack.  
> ______________
> 
> \- i cannot believe i wrote 43k of vixxo fic oh my god  
> \- the mad push to finish means that i broke a personal record by writing over 5k in a single day _after work_ and then i broke it again by writing over 10k in a day. that was I N S A N E  
>  \- there are a lot of things i didn't get a chance to put in the actual fic just because i didn't have room or they didn't fit with the pacing of the main plot... i wanted to write a hyukbin side story to post at the same time i reposted but i don't have it done whoops.   
> \- we actually wrote out a full bodyswap chart on Tucker's blackboard while i was rolling around on the floor trying to nail down this plot so uh... [here it is](http://i60.tinypic.com/302tca1.jpg).  
> \- i was originally going to do just a straight mafia au plot but it was giving me the hugest block ever until i realized that the way to make myself write it was to make it more _ridiculous_. hence the bodyswapping.  
>  i had an actual outline and scraps of scenes already written to get me past the first check-in, so i ended up cannibalizing the first scene and scrapping the rest to get what you all finally got.  
> the original outline and scrapped scenes are posted [here](http://gollumpanties.livejournal.com/191539.html).  
> \- the tattoo is a [Noodle Incident](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoodleIncident). it will never be explained or clarified further. i don't know what it is or where it is because i feel like that would actually make it less funny. #sorrynotsorry


End file.
